sign painter, read my first result for the what-should-you
be-when-you-grow-up test we took in grade school
on desktop computers. still, in the guidance office,
they told me I could be anything, so I became
a portable radio. then, a canyon railing. I tried
to become many things: unabandonable
as a barn cat. no dice. next, a magnitude
of resistive force acting against an open
palm, a slapdance tune played against skin.
from there, I became a factory of sounds. a mill
filled by much machinery. the jaw alone
is a simple machine, the mouth made of two levers,
a shared a temporomandibular fulcrum.
I became a clicking socket. Ticking, like
that crocodile pregnant with a clock.
to play Peter Pan, Mary Martin became a boy
in the 1960 television musical loved by a child
who grew up and became my mother. in the second
act, Peter’s medicine becomes poisoned, turns red—
a theatrical convention of change only the audience
can see. Mary Martin leaps to her feet, pleads
clap if you believe. I become a person who believes
in helping. I believe it when I learn the pained scream
used in over 400 films was found on a stock reel
labeled Man Being Eaten by Alligator. leaving the movie-plex
late one night, I become a bad date, privately thinking
there is so much my mother would love
but will never see. at the end of the musical,
the lost boys become repentant for their wayward days.
they clasp their hands before Wendy’s father,
promise if adopted, they will grow up, they will shine
his shoes, they will never be a bother. I recognize
the scaly sound. it follows me to work, drags me underwater.
