Inside Out

My freshman english teacher "gave me"(I forgot to give it back) a book of poems by Diane Wakoski. The first few months I had it I was both moved and enchanted by it. It was like a book of fairy tales. Some time passed and I picked it up again. Reading her book the second time around was one of the loneliest experiences of my adolescence. It's interesting how your mind can interpret images depending on your disposition.

Inside Out by Diane Wakoski

I walk the purple carpet into your eye

carrying the silver butter server

but a truck rumbles by,

leaving its black tire prints on my foot

and old images the sound of banging screen doors on hot

afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on

the sink

flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,

inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the

old songs that line your hands, inside

eyes that change like a snowflake every second,

inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,

inside the whiskers of a cat,

inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you

grind the pigments with your teeth, painting

with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting

with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside

the veins where my small feet touch

bottom.

You must reach inside and pull me

like a silver bullet

from your arm.