Acceptance Speech
There are certain things to thank like:
the plastic laminate on my first library card
for lasting, Grandma’s hips which
gave unto my waterbed as
the Little Golden books spilled from her lips,
my tiny ears which jarred them like preserves.
I have to thank the lack of earplugs
while crickets and toads gossiped
at night, the view of the moon
on a rusted rooftop resting between
the bulky shoulders of two
magnolia trees, and the bite
of rotten pecans that pinch
behind the tongue,
before you know they’re bad.
Thanks, 1989 computer that
taught me the difference
between Asian and African
elephants, before I knew it was a test—
and thank the urge to taste
the milk of their tusks,
to mull their murky eyes.
Thank you to the grader of that test
who labeled me special so
I could learn about compost,
And latin roots and Poe—
Poe for proving poetry can be ripped
apart, like reconsidered puzzle pieces
disappearing yearly between the floorboards
of life—Dickinson, for finding those pieces and
making new puzzles, proving
poetry can put things together.
Thanks Dad, for crouching
in the hallway after ten hours of work,
to read to us, pressed between
the bedroom doors we’d all too soon close.
Thanks Nancy Drew
for always solving the case and
to the bitch who wrote about her,
knowing it was never that easy.
Thanks to Keats and Coleridge for
penning sonnets I would never
understand, so that one day I would
grow up to write things
in black and white.
Thank you red lights for letting me
tuck myself into a cloud.
And to the green lights, too,
for making me wonder what
I miss.
Thank you love, for being
overrated, and wisdom
for being a tiny door;
thanks to poems like these, that
when drank, shrink us to just the right size
to walk right in.
