Painstaker. Jeffrey Galbraith

time a neighbor-farmer

      thought out loud I might be funny,

      so dad put me to work

      with the hogs and I watched

      from the trees as he called for me

      through outbuildings and barn,

      his anger on my name.

      Built anxious, I feared legion

      in the swine, spooked at the sound

      of shades on the stair,

      had not yet learned to thrill

      in becoming stranger, more

      distant from myself.

      Record of Persons Whose Names Have Changed

      From an exhibit of eighteenth-century documents at the public library, Chelmsford, Mass.

      All is vanity. The man who changed Bumside

      to Burnside, afraid of himself, the protuberance of it,

      hanging there for whoever

      might use it to demean him or make dirty. In such cases,

      the rubbed-out letters

      shelter and shield, Lorenzo

      rechristened Larry, in the daybreak

      of state function:

      Be it enacted, &c., as follows . . .

      The magic is immediate. The new name a sandpaper

      smoothing away bumps

      and unsightly knobs—a flatline of your former self.

      For others, before and after pictures

      show no perceptible change, no clearing away of trees

      or rocks from the rich, black soil. As in the case

      of Micajah, who strangely

      insisted on Morrill. What neighbor haunted him?

      What hope of safety? What millstone

      kept him just out of reach of the surface, that intoxication

      of air that comes

      from standing aloof, unknown, amid the rabble?

      With My Father, Cutting Pigs

      Finally I learn to hold, raise

      the small one

      head-down, hock-spread,

      to stretch flat the skin,

      my hands raw around

      the bristled hooves.

      Bending low, my father

      makes two quick cuts, kneads

      the skin to surface them.

      With enough practice I turn

      the pig quick so my father

      can scissor the tail.

      As the squealing fades

      into a burst of grunts,

      I hold out to him the next.

      When Matt’s Dad Lost His Hand

      We comforted Matt on the school bus—Does he have a fake one now?

      Then somebody made fun of Bunny Lip, aka Leon

      Stinks, aka Stutter Step, and he boxed wild as the bus

      turned from blacktop roads to gravel, past scraping

      harvesters, the eaten fields, dropping us off one by one. We trudged

      the lane to the house, heads bowed looking for rocks

      to throw at sparrows on the fence line. Everything tensed

      when we appeared, angered by hunger, lowing with milk.

      Menagerie Wish List

      If I could, I would buy an exotic live animal for every room of the house. Two lion cubs in the bedroom as the emblem of innocent risk-taking. A giraffe in the foyer drawing the eye upward to our gorgeous cathedral ceilings. Maybe a gorilla with thumbs to help in the kitchen. In the bathroom, with its tropical steam and rot, a parrot for my feathered mirror. If we had an attached garage, I could go for a monkey—one of those cotton-top tamarins we saw at the Museum of Science (they looked like little old men, gymnastic and wise). For the kids’ rooms who knows, since they are animals still. The small one continues to take food from my hand, and none of them is entirely self-grooming. Though I keep purchasing their food, already it’s plain I won’t be their master for long.

      Frankenthumb

      Let the mind spin with the baby-faced

      farm kid who grabbed

      the spell-casting

      spinning of the tractor as it drilled

      the PTO shaft powering the auger-belt

      that floated the fresh-baled straw