Juvenile Delinquency

I stole coins from my mother’s purse to
buy fresh ginger no that’s not true I was
the ginger one hair blazing on occasional

days of sunlight as red as oxidation
I stole to buy a calendar with every month
a different bird from robin to rook

from crow to cuckoo I cut the pictures out
and glued them to my wall so I could
live among the flying creatures of the earth

I stole coins from my mother’s purse just
to feel their weight inside my pocket
I counted them repeatedly and told myself

that I was rich now somehow that weight
became a sort of anti-gravity that made me
lighter than I ever truly was joining

the birds that lingered above the smoking
chimneys of the town fluttering
my arms in feeble similarity to flight

I stole coins from my mother’s purse but
never picked my father’s pocket fearful of
his strength and the switch he’d cut from

an apple tree to whip me sore standing in
the light that burned my hair a rusty silhouette
of stone and metal a towering sculpture

that belied his inner softness the tattoos
of his eyelids as pale as Russian spirit
as painful as the gray of railroad steel.