Little James, Changeling Child

My cousin screams his bloodful displeasure
The textures rake his skin
The noises break his ears

My aunt and uncle coax him into boy scouts
And little league, summer camp for audio-integration,
Have him tested for every possible disorder
Still he wails, bites, kicks, and spits

That baby with sweet almond eyes,
Who smiled and drooled as any baby should,
Was replaced in the night by a child
Who cannot speak to the world,
A boy of violent inclinations

He eats but rarely
Shoves his sister into walls
Shrinks from thunder as though it were iron

The other children call him freak and idiot
If not for their Roman Catholic upbringing,
They would call him changeling
If not for the teachers' watchful eyes
They would do him worse
Run him through with lead pencils
Strike matches along the walls of the gym
And light his shirttails
To see if he gives himself away as a monstercreature

My aunt and uncle, throats raw from yelling,
Eyes sore from crying, sigh into the relieving moments
When their undersized and battering son sleeps,
Twichily dreaming of the other worlds to which he belongs

Of the Laurel Tree in My Garden

An aeolian harp is an instrument played not by human hands but by the wind. A stringed instrument, tall, if you place it in a windy corridor or on a hilltop, the wind will rush through the strings, causing them to vibrate and making the most eerie, beautiful, and haunting noises...at once a sigh and a moan. It was named after the ancient Greek god Aeolus, god of the wind.


Daphne remembers
And wind whistles through her.

Once she tumbled, limbs over limbs,
With lovely Eola.
She and she would laugh, dance.
They were for one another
And it was enough.

But jealous gods breathe jealous gales,
And Apollo, storm of lust in him,
Could not bear to see their hands entwined
Climbing like catbriars with dark, tumescent berries.
He gave chase to take what was never his.

When I see Daphne now,
She is posing her prayer to the gods from my garden.
Her feet anchored in the soil, her arms up in supplication,
She begs the gods for the day when no man sees fit
To rape what he may not have for the asking,
And when a pair of blossoming nymphs
May love as they choose.

I add my prayer to the laurel's,
And in my queer heart dream
Of some future she, and the knowledge
That she and I will be for one another
And it will be enough.

Meanwhile in the garden, Daphne remembers.
She has become both a tree and a harp,
And Eola, a whisper of wind, still plays her strings.