Misreading of children’s book title, “Felix Feels Better”The toothache that seeks out only him,the quarters his sisters get to keep.The last piece of bread gone, gonethe brownie crumbs and vacuumedup even the square of yellow lightunder the bedroom door. At threehis mother left him screaming in his carseatwhile she ran back into the story.Two minutes! she said, rollingher eyes. As if it were alla plot. At six he read onlyanimal tales: Laika the space dogand her one-way voyage.The chimps Nim and Lucy, raisedto be interesting to humansuntil the humans lostinterest. How to keepyourself novel?Bitterness is retrospectionsplintered, a weighing of the parts.The young are usually exempt.At nine he’s scrawny as young bamboo,stiff as a guard dog’s scruff.He reads about the wildchildren: Kaspar Hauser who couldn’tstand, Victor of Aveyron who couldn’t sit,and Genie, little Genie, in the darkfor longer than he’s been alive, strappedto her chair or bound in her crib,for whom the language of love cametoo little, too late, too scattered. The scientistsgrew their beards and bought her dresses,they tamed her fear of dogs by leavingher a puppy. When the funding ended,all departed.It is Felix who will teach herto chew apart the words she needs,who will comb her hair,and tell her she is beautiful.Felix will show her how,in its tactful arc above the ceiling,sunlight breaches every room in turn.____
Bonnie Auslander is a D.C.-area poet who's had work published in
Field,
Beltway Poetry Quarterly,
Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She has held fellowships at Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and at the Millay Colony, among other places. She's married to a scientist and has two children.
