Thursday, April 12, 2012

PAD Challenge Day 11

I'm late - should have posted yesterday, but other matters intervened, namely tax return preparation, which isn't yet completed, and hampered by the fact that my desktop computer has been on the fritz for a few weeks. It's been serviced over the last couple of months, with new parts to the point that it may be a whole new computer before long. No one seems to be able to put their finger on the problem. What a lemon this machine has become, and it's only 15 months old.
Anyway, here's my dual prompt from yesterday, from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with a season in the title, and (2) write a poem that uses the five senses. They seem to fit together pretty well, and my result is a nostalgia/memoir poem that's mostly fictional.


Mercurochrome Summer


The third time I skinned both my knees

the summer I was eight, my mother

just shook her head. You’ll have scabs

on top of your scabs, she sighed,

as she painted them both with Mercurochrome,

that vile red liquid antiseptic that stung

worse than the scrapes themselves.

She eased my pain with a cherry Popsicle,

the sweet and cold in my mouth offsetting

the hot throbbing in my knees. Afterward,

I went outside and showed Danny next door

my war-painted battle scars, then stuck out

my cherry-stained tongue, and told him

I drank some of the Mercurochrome.

Yuck! he cried.


It was a day full of red: Danny’s big sister Julie

sashayed by to show off her new red sundress

and flip hairdo. I told her she looked like Sandra Dee,

but Danny said she smelled like onions. Later,

a fire engine screamed through the neighborhood

when Mr. Berry knocked over his barbecue grill

and set his lawn on fire. Fresh cut grass and charcoal

smell good, but not when they’re put together.


I read in my science class that when the sun

goes down, the reds are the first colors to fade.

By dusk, my knees were no longer bright red,

and evening sounds took over for the colors –

the ice cream man on a late run, mosquitoes

teasing my ears, the Fisker brothers setting off

firecrackers in the woods, my parents watching

Jackie Gleason in the living room. I got ready for bed,

pulling my pajama pants over my tender knees,

which were already beginning to heal.

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