Issue 20: Rich Ives
Toad Child
1.
swollen thoughts in their arrogant foul atrium
long for the mud
life sticks to you there
where the child slips back
what the child knows begins releasing
the air in your hollow bones
one leg of a fretful god’s limping knowledge
caressed by the stink of before-birth
the other threatening the same ancient weather with
the wound he can’t even recognize
further below
your wings are stalking the vertical road’s
inevitable appointment for
the last day’s investigation
his story could be yours
stick in his hand cracked low like a claw
tortured to a latent greeting
vulnerable
every fresh insect at first only a tongue dart
what have you done to him
now listen to the corrections
a summer station in your treeway
imagine a child could do it
a pair of feet
excommunicated from the body
left standing beside their
imaginary little overboots
in the glorious mudroom
those whose eyes have not been plucked out
those about to arrive barefoot
on the ancient stage
are the listening objects
2.
imagine the toad child on wheels
tricycle boy pierced by saintly arrows
his illicit owl children
his guests at the table of his undesirable body
one eye falls out and sees the other eye
dreaming of falling out
storm limbs fat with draped leaves
toad child’s slime-royal secrets
too long in the rain that rises
damp shuffle of foot breezes
a meal of pucker and contrition
oh friends of the swelling
snow on the bones of these gentled hills
3.
golden foam on the salver
has this been arranged by royal clouds
what proclamation spits so
what leash
serpent-like and tented in
to the shelter of cautionary rice
morning tilts like another country
oh winsome of antelope breath
only forestry awaits your silent meadow
only snorted bath salts for your neighbor’s nosey dust-bowl
have we not arrived at a future without a progress
now bring elemental fishermen to the ignorant flood
oh colonial ribaldry are you dinner now or conviction
4.
shall we now draw Evening with a Darker Pencil
as if it would flow as but a spigot’s operation
a fear of oration inhabits him this toad child
cloned to bundles of protestation and tears
for he is all of us speaking out against
all of us
he should be rested to a home
for the criminally sane
he should be given peristaltic asylum by
a hung jury
the toad child’s quest spits up blooded words
the child eats
the toad child’s vest shines with grease
from the leg of an ant
the toad child’s nunnery is a limousine
with its own executioner’s brush
shall we now draw The Last Days of Reasoning
as if it were a delightful abstraction
5.
the ancient windows of pain open the toad child
offering juvenilia with crayon sunsets
or scavenging sewage with a golden spoon
complimentary fingers touch him to tickledom
playmates with too much imagination
their rubbery gunboats innocent as hoisted cheese
in the alleys of window wells seven maids
celebrate milky holidays and coax the toad child
a child finds the child and keeps him in a box
flies and flies and dinner and flies
perhaps a beetle for showing his tongue
I was reading The Political Cannibals of Eastern Wisconsin
to my own children at the time I think
one of them wanted to become a popular butcher
but the tale of the toad child scared them beyond
I told the story only once you masters of flight
though it was a favorite of my own childhood
soon I became enamored of forgetfulness so that
as my children grew older they appreciated me more
they explained to me that I loved their mother which explained
why I did those things to her
it made them feel important I was happy
I had learned to forget
I let them think it was a disease
I unburdened myself of memories
6.
inside his cardboard prison the toad child
could hear the fly swatter when the lid was raised
soon the noise made his tongue flicker
always he waited for the lid to close
you should not give your enemies
an advantage
he sucked the bodies empty and dry
the other child
brought more
toad child wasn’t eating?
how quickly the flies dried up
an odor of garden approached
scarlet flowers in the box
what was this
the toad child had a creepy
admirer
the flies became greasy and fat
then a faint odor of sunshine and carrion
one day was longer the lid remained
so many flies he could hear them
no dinner
7.
another child opened the box
fly dust and toad child’s
skin like paper
he set the box beside the first child
the new child gagged
disappeared
the box was open
toad child smelled dinner
flickered
weeks later
the flies stopped
weeks later
toad child had fattened
could barely move
would no longer fit in the window well
adventure beckoned
the cruel road of two dimensional children
beckoned
but the toad child was changing
hands
where two feet had been
toad child went back for
his box
cleaver
went looking for children
the generous smaller parts
that attracted so much more
already aging
Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. He has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He is the 2012 winner of the Thin Air Creative Nonfiction Award. His books include Light from a Small Brown Bird (Bitter Oleander Press--poetry), Sharpen (The Newer York—fiction chapbook), The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking (What Books) and Tunneling to the Moon (Silenced Press—hybrid).
