Old poem- Autobiography Assignment

White Harbor, '96

We moved north of Palatine
to the state-line, where I
swallowed my first twelve years.

Of this time, I remember drinking
Jolt Cola and fucking my sofa,
thinking mostly of Lisa,
an older girl from Catholic School
who crowned me her Prince after
I let her use my urine for
a drug-test.

I remember Nate's brother Nick
showing me how to do cocaine
in his walk-in closet. I felt
sad and nauseous. I saw him
some years later, strung out
at Church's.

My mother was a substitute teacher,
Father a gun collector.
Sister painted her walls black
and blared Reznor, her savior.
I learned depression from her,
as well as how to swear.
My first love was her friend

Shelly, a mousy diet-pill addict
who would sometimes babysit me,
allowing me to watch TV before
falling asleep on her
non-belly.

Old Poem

Case Study

Wednesday, at the parkway,
Elizabeth accepted money from

an undercover deputy. Outside
the Estero Public Library,

Mallory purchases
21 tablets as a present

for Colie. All women,
charged with felonies,

remained friendly as
a total of 55 faces

took custody
of the evening

Revised older poem

Lorna, A minor

We spoke in strangled English
after belted with the garden hoe.
Conceived in cafeterias (hush!),
we were commas tossed through the fleshy O.

Soon the sky was redder than hellish russet,
and Grandpa's pills were gone in a week.
I begged you not to cross it
out, the sentence I sharpied on the back

of your pink and black ledger, where life
found language in shitlists and shades
of private anguish, as if
life was there only to rip you to shreds.

You were born in 1982
to red-eyed equines caked in frost
When you were eight you killed a cockatoo,
my love for you the cost.