They called me Maggot-the-unborn-fly
and Lanny Millman shot me with a BB gun—
nothing appeased them, not Snickers bars, nothing.
They chased me around the schoolyard: you killed Jesus!
Lanny Millman shot me with a BB gun—
Billy C rubbed my tit hard and ran away,
chased me around the schoolyard: you killed Jesus
and climbed a tree, pelted me with crabapples.
Billy C rubbed my tit hard and ran away.
They wrecked the playhouse Uncle Robert built me,
climbed a tree, pelted me with crabapples.
I screamed, but my mother didn’t hear.
They wrecked the playhouse Uncle Robert built me.
Twirling in our kitchen, Mother catered to Father.
I screamed, but my mother didn’t hear—
my father due home in hat and herringbone, nice pot roast for him.
Twirling in our kitchen, Mother catered to Father—
martini just right, gin and vermouth, the tiniest drop,
my father due home in hat and herringbone, nice pot roast for him,
my Mother in high heels, dab of perfume on her neck.
Martini just right, gin and vermouth, the tiniest drop.
Nothing appeased the boys, not Snickers bars, nothing.
(Mother waiting in high heels, dab of perfume on her neck.)
The boys called me Maggot-the-unborn-fly.
MARGOT WIZANSKY is a painter and poet, with poems in journals such as Poetry East, Lumina, Tar River Review, Quarterly West, and several anthologies, including Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease and a poem in the Cancer Poetry Project’s second anthology. She also has edited two anthologies, Mercy of Tides: Poems for a Beach House (2003), and Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains (2006). In 2008, she won the Writers @ Work Poetry Fellowship competition, and in 2010, the Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize, to travel and write in Ireland with the Carlow University MFA program. Margot transcribed the oral history Don’t Look Them in the Eye: Love, Life, and Jim Crow, the story of Emerson Stamps, grandson of slaves, told in his words and her poems. Her manuscript Here Comes Love! is in the final round of the National Poetry Series Open Competition.
