Virgil Suarez

 

 

VIRGIL'S CRIB

Here the toe-chewed marionette,
tufts of teddy-bear stuffing cobwebbed
into the corner rails from which young

Virgil screamed, "Get me out of here,"
his grandmother's dentures, stolen
again, hard under his pillow. They

chatter to him at night from Sappho's
love poems. A murcielago, mobile
dangles shadows across the moonlit

walls, sheets of paper devouring
the vastness of light . . . embroidered
pillow with Woody Wodpecker's

red crest which turns the boy on.
At night, after everyone falls asleep,
the young gunslinger shoots ghosts

of the people he'll never know, duck-
gallery style. Once during a bout
with chicken pox the boy draws

his words on the sheet with scabs
of infested wounds, on his body now
this pockmarked history of what he said.