Headpiece Filled With Straw

Kiddie Lit

Neonatology

by Elizabeth Alexander

Is
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.

Then everything dries and disappears
Then everything dries and disappears

Neonatology
is day into night into day,
light into dark into light, semi-
and full-fledged, hyperconscious,
is funky, is funny: the baby farts,
we laugh. The baby burps, we smile, say “Yes.”
The baby poops, his whole body stiffens,
then steam heat floods the pipes.
He slashes his nose with nails we cannot bear to trim,
takes a nap, and the wounds disappear.
The spirit lives in your squirts and coos.
Your noises and fluids are what you do.

Neonatology
is what we cannot see: you speak to the birds,
the birds speak back, is solemn,
singing, funky, frightening,
buckets of tears on the baby’s lovely head, is
spongy.

“One day you’ll forget the baby,” Mother says,
“as if he were a pocketbook, a bag of groceries,
something you leave on a kitchen counter-top.
I left you once, put on my coat and hat,
remembered my pocketbook, the top and bottom locks,
got all the way to the elevator before I realized.

It only happens once.”

We lay on the bed and we rode the grey waves,
apricot juice in a glass in your hand,
single color in this grey light like November.
It is April. We rock.

Then the miracle which is always a miracle happens in many stages,

then the mouth which opens,
the bluebell
that sings.

I was just pregnant,
am no longer pregnant,
see myself in my memory
in overalls, sensible shoes.

Shockingly vital, mammoth giblet,
the second living thing to break free
of my body in fifteen minutes.

The midwife presents it on a platter.
We do not eat, have no Tupperware
to take it home and sanctify a tree.

Instead, we marvel at my cast-off meat,
the almost-pulsing slab, bloody mesa,
what lived moments ago and now has died.

Now I must take the baby to my breast.
There is no mother here but me.
The midwife discards the placenta.

What do you make of this rain, little one,
night rain that your parents have loved all their lives?

From 2 to 3 “The Streets of San Francisco” comes on each night,
and I watch Karl Malden stop crime, and listen

to the mouse squeak of your suckling, behold your avid jaws,
your black eyes: otter, oscelot,

my whelp, my cub, my seapup.
In the days before you smile at me

or call me Mama or love me,
love is all tit, all wheat-smelling milk, humid crook of the arm

where your warm, damp head seems to  live.
I pretend your clasping my finger means you love me

Dreamt the baby
was born again,
arrived this time in a Moses basket,
had a crone’s face,
a Senegalese head wrap,
a pendulous lower lip.

“I’d walked across the bridge
with the Savarin Coffee sign
from Harlem to the Bronx
to a frame shop just past the open market.
You were maybe two months old, I’m sure,
a), because the day was very hot, and
b), because I rolled you in the pram and not the stroller.
I was having the Japanese woodcuts framed,
the ones by Daddy’s dresser.
Something must have struck you funny,
and right in the middle of the shop you laughed,
loudly, a real laugh. I never told you?
I must have told you. That was the first time
I heard you laugh.”

Mamma Zememesh, I dreamt your sister’s names.
They floated around me as objects, satellites:

Zayd

Ntutu

Yeshareg

Asefash

Moulounesh

a spinning, turning, turning, spin.

I think the baby needs to eat. The baby’s hungry.
Look! He’s making sucking noises. Look!
His fist is in his mouth.
Why does the baby sleep all day? How
does the baby sleep at night? Three feedings? Huhn.
You need to let that baby cry.
You need to pick that baby up.
You need to put that baby down.
Kiss the baby too much, he’ll get heartburn.
What are those bumps on the baby’s face?
Why is the baby crying so?
That baby needs to eat, and now.

I dream the OB-Gyn is here
to spend the night with us. He wears
his white coat and his stethescope
to bed, looks like a loaf
of whole wheat bread. Goodnight, we say,
and shut our eyes.
The next day
he’s up early, jolly. “Time
to have this baby! Tally ho!” And so we do.

All of my aunties chatting like crows on a line,
all of my aunties on electric breast pumps,
the double kind, one for each exhausted tit.

Mommy, the baby’s head popped off! A tiny head,
white, wet, bloodless, heartbeat still on the soft spot.
She tells me, Stick it back on, Girl. Don’t be afraid.

You can’t show your children you’re afraid.

A paraffin seam bubbles on his scalp.
A pink cicatrix lines his lovely neck.

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo,
a hand-made kite —

Post-partum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here,
from flushed and floating, lush and curled.
Now you are the pink one, the movie star.
It has happened. You are here,

and you sing, mewl, holler, peep,
swallow the light and bubble it back,
shine, contain multitudes, gleam. You

are the new one, the movie star,
and birth is like jazz,
from silence and blood, silence
then everything,

jazz.

Link: Elizabeth Alexander | Poems.

The Owl and the Pussycat

By Edward Lear (1871)

 

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

 

 

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

 

Link: Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat.

warty bliggens the toad

By Don Marquis
From "archy and mehitabel", 1927.

i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him

do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy

a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the centre of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens

to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favoured
 
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe has done to deserve me

if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum

archy

How to do the Hokey Pokey

By Jeff Brechlin, written in the style of William Shakespeare

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

This is a weekly winner in the wonderful Washington Post Style Invitational, where the contest was to rewrite some banal instructions in the style of a famous writer.

Link: The Style Invitational Week 498: Unamazing But True! (washingtonpost.com).

My only editorial note on the above set of instructions: it would have been much more perfect composed in 14 lines, abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Shame about that missing quatrain, dude. Maybe the Hokey Pokey muse got just a bit too shaken all about.

It's Dark in Here

By Shel Silverstein

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

My mom read Shel Silverstein poems with her third graders for years, so she first turned me on to them years ago (and she agrees that kids just devour his books), but thanks for the tip to the Wondering Minstrels site, and through the member's commentary, I found the most WONDERFUL children's lit site! Wow, I could crawl in there and live for days!

The treasure trove is courtesy of Jim Trelease, my new hero. I must read more by him, but for starters, here's a bit from his What's Right or Wrong with Poetry. His site on kids and reading is something you also do not want to miss. Jim Trelease on Reading.

If "lobster" were an important subject in the curriculum, we would have lobster classes for twelve straight years: where to find them, how they live, and, of course, how to catch, prepare, cook, and eat them. But if, after graduating from school, the end result was a lifelong loss of appetite for lobster, there would be a general reassessment of the lobster curriculum. And this is precisely what has happened to poetry in the United States--except no one is reassessing the poetry curriculum.

The contrast between how children respond to poetry and how adults do is seen most strikingly in two facts:

1. Until The Road Less Traveled surpassed it, Shel Silverstein's collection of children's poetry, A Light in the Attic, held The New York Times record for the longest time on its bestseller list (186 weeks).
2. The worst-selling department in bookstores is adult poetry; it sells so poorly, many stores no longer even stock it.

Poetry dies for most people on graduation day. The thickest coat of dust in a public library can be found in its poetry section. Considering how much time is spent in secondary classrooms dissecting poetry, one would expect graduates to be ravenous poetry consumers. Wrong. Why is this so?

One of poetry's strengths is its brevity. A poem is not a novel or a short story, yet it can be very revealing in its smallness--like one of those see-through Easter eggs. A poem should add up to something, a slice of life. One expert put it this way: "Unless a poem says something to a child, tells him a story, titillates his ego, strikes up a happy recollection, bumps his funny bone--in other words, delights him--he will not be attracted to poetry regardless of the language it uses."

Therefore the choice of poets and poems will have everything to do with how children react to poetry. But the American approach ignores those factors. It is more interested in "covering the core curriculum" than creating lifetime interest. The higher the grade level, the more obscure and symbolic and less humorous and understandable the poetry becomes. Because all the poetry is obscure, every poem must be dissected like some kind of frog in biology class, and we end up making poetry appear so unnecessarily complicated, people like children's author Jean Little decide not to stop the next time they come to the "woods on a snowy evening."

[...]

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein, is so popular with children, librarians and teachers insist it is the book most frequently stolen from their schools and libraries. Over the last eight years I've asked eighty thousand teachers if they know Where the Sidewalk Ends (two million copies in print), and three-quarters of the teachers raise their hands. "Wonderful!" I say. "Now, who has enough copies of this book for every child in your room?" Nobody raises a hand. In eight years, only eighteen teachers out of eighty thousand had enough copies in their rooms for every child.

I continue, "Do each of you know the books in your classroom no child would ever consider stealing?" They nod in recognition. "Do you have enough copies of those books for every child in the room?" Reluctantly, they nod agreement. Here we've got a book kids love to read so much they'll steal it right and left and we haven't got enough copies; but every year we've got twenty-eight copies of a book they hate.

If we wish children to believe poetry is important, the worst way to teach it is to develop a two week poetry block, teach it, and then forget it--because that's what children will do with it. The best way is to incorporate meaningful poetry throughout the day. The question of which poems to read has already been answered for you by the anthologists included in the poetry section of the Treasury (see below), who pored through tens of thousands of children's poems to come up with children's favorites.