Monkey Mind

by Steve Orlen

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life. For example, I looked at that girl over there In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep. Walking home, I asked her both questions And instead of answering she told her mother Who told the teacher who told my father. After all these years, I can almost feel his hand Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision, Then coming down so hard it took my breath away, And up again in that small arc To smack his open palm against my butt. I’m a slow learner And still sometimes I’m sitting here wondering what my father Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five, Plunged down into his easy chair half the night Listening to Bach cantatas. I know he knows At every minute of every hour that he’s going to die Because he told my mother and my mother told me. I didn’t cry or cry out or say I’m sorry. I lay across his lap and wondered what He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

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From The Elephant’s Child: New and Selected Poems, 1978–2005, Ausable Press, 2006, by STEVE ORLEN.