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Two Poems
by Alicia Wright
Story Pole
My dad cracks
an egg
on my head.
—or maybe
it’s my grandpa
this time—
it could be
varnish /
menthol /
gasoline;
it could be
sawdust /
Fast Orange /
airplane glue,
palms wool-dry
and the egg
is not an egg.
it’s two fistfuls
of warm air
and me playing
at ignorance,
aping cross-
legged naïveté
at the foot
of the chair.
✦✦✦
Recess
Why should a child know the grit
of brick wall on bare skin?
Mortar like a shed scab. A game
and no winner: you show me yours.
A favorite shirt, shoulders freckling
in the feral almost-summer heat.
A child—this one, brown-
eyed and guileless—
should be skinning their knees
on the sun-baked playground,
should be learning fractions
in the shade, learning
that two tender halves still knit
into a single clumsy whole.