A powerful poem from Heather Dorn, current director of the Binghamton Poetry Project and the creator of Sappho’s Circle, a women’s poetry group. She has been invaluable to me as an emerging poet. Congratulations, Heather!
by Heather Dorn
I fall down the stairs like a rag doll
again and again when I’m four.
The hat rack breaks my body’s tumble
and I thump to a stop. Nobody ever
moves that hat rack, maybe worried
I’d crack headfirst into the wall instead.
Better to be impaled. There is something
slippery about being four and next to the steps
in my house. There is something
that still pushes me over the edge
of that first step now. I have seen how
this is inherited. I watched my brother
bang his three year old head into
concrete over and over again. He is too
sturdy to fall down the stairs and has to
break himself another way instead. I see
my mother’s face, like blue ink spilled
on her eyes. She did not fall, whatever
she says. I watch my father’s fist raise
above her, gripped, as if…
View original post 283 more words
Top of JC's Mind 