The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Karen Schubert

FOR THE BOYS
 
The girls with clean shoes and Barbies
had rules, couldn't sleep out with us,
didn't have their lawns spoiled by
baseball in summer, football
in fall, garden hose flooding for winter
skating. The boys didn't seem
to notice I was a girl, maybe short
hair and bruised knees were camouflage
enough, they welted me with dodge balls
just the same. I liked their talk, and trouble,
learned things I shouldn't know like
what happens when you pour water
on a gasoline fire, and how it is to have
your wind knocked out. Mostly the wind
was behind us as we rode our bikes
down topsoil cliffs, leaped off
swings into space. Like the boys at the pier
who taught me to fish
for bait from the bucket, calling me
Worm Woman with a bit of pride,
they raised me, found a place for me
when I had no fishing stuff of my own.
I want those boys to know
that my daughter can change her own oil,
and that I am almost never afraid.

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