Laura Kasischke
Babysitter
for Antonya Nelson
When I was sixteen I decided
to eat the underworld fruit.
What the hell, I said.
It was juicy, and cold.
My hair was black so I dyed it
black, and I wore
nothing but black.
I still have the skull
tattooed on my ass. I never cried
and I never laughed. I decided
to reinvent silence
right in my own home.
My father’s hair went white overnight
and he hung up his mailman blues
and retired. My mother
fell down the stairs and died.
My father said he was glad
at least she couldn’t see
what would become of me.
That winter I divided
the bear arrows up
among my friends. Aim
to kill, I said
and I tacked its head
to the post of my bed. At night
it sang its grizzly song
to me, and I slipped
my neck between its teeth.
I trust you completely
I said.
For attention at school
I swallowed fire, I ate
crows whole, and once
I jumped out
from behind a bush
and scared a priest to death.
At sixteen I discovered sex
in the back seat
of a cannibal’s car, though
we only went so far.’
It was my first taste
of human flesh, and it
was tender and sweet.
When I was sixteen, the beast
came looking for me, some
of my friends impaled themselves
on rusty knives, while I
was granted eternal life,
I don’t know why. Wild
dogs followed me home, rabid
bats ate
from my hand, and children—
children loved me.
At night while you were out dancing
your children gathered around me
and put their little
raccoon hands in mine.
From Housekeeping in a Dream, Carnegie-Mellon University Press.