​Cold War


I was shaped
like a Big Stick popsicle.
I wore one-piece playsuits tied
at the shoulder with white bias tape.
I pulled the crotch to one side
for peeing.
The man I wasn’t supposed to talk
to lived on the street that led to my
best friend’s house, the park, the library,
the movies. He talked to me
every day while he watered his dichondra
with a cracked green
hose. He squirted my bare feet as I jigged
on the sidewalk. He told me the cool round
grass would feel like kisses
on my feet.
The man I wasn’t supposed to talk
to had a bomb shelter under his backyard. All
cool concrete and safety. He wanted to show
me. He begged me to look.
If there were a war
he promised to save me, my dolls,
and my cat.
My favorite
game was arctic adventure. I lived
alone in an igloo formed from the side
of a glacier. I wore polar-bear skins,
ate raw fish, combed my hair with fine bones.
I listened only to birds. I was perfectly
safe.

From Traveler in Paradise: New & Selected Poems