jean street

There was a little pig
tied to a heater
he turned around
and burnt his seater




I wrote it on cardboard cutout from kelloggs cerial. Hands always in something; flour and water, mud and spoon, sticks and earth, tadpoles and ponds, leggo on carpet, fingers up nose. I went over to the neighbours for dinner, it was a big deal for me. She lived on the other side of the woods. We had chips and hot dogs and pepsi. I'm a frog you're a frog, kiss me and i'll turn into a prince. French canadiana and rotten teeth. Joyce shows up at my front door once and in all her pockets of her snowsuit she has chocolate bars and black balls and gummy bears and black hair and pale skin, she come from the irish peasantry. The woods. The woods where I played indians with johnny who showed me his long skinny penis. We made a little fire under a triangle of sticks and it grew and it grew and it grew. Half the woods burnt down. My father said boys could pee standing up but I had to squat. Squaw. There was something wrong about you my mother would say much later, you always wanted to be outside. Outside one summer I stepped into dog shit every day between my toes it would sometimes ooze and my mother would carry me to the bathroom and wash my feet down in the bathtub. We had a fire in the house. Playing with a bedlight under the sheets making shadows against the cotton. We had thick and wide window sills with shutters on the inside I sometimes would hide myself in between and watch the outside. My father pulled my pants down and gave me a good spanking in the back yard because I accepted twenty five cents for raking the neighbour's yard. We weren't allowed chips at dinner and chocolates in our snowsuits and we helped our neighbours for free. Please say please and thank you. My mother, when we had invites, would make the tiniest and most exotic hors d'oeuvres; smoked oyster and olives, marinated squid on cracker, fish egg mayonnaise. I was sometimes allowed to peel the onions.