Photography © Abbie Doll

 

Wednesday’s Child

Some days are Norse gods with bellybands
of thunder. I walked through childhood
with those gods. I wondered what Carter’s
olive green pills were all about. The spring
will give you a definitive answer in a marsh
tomorrow. There is always an answer.

I remember walking through hammers
of rain to present my report
on Soviet hydroelectric dams on former marshes
on an opaque projector. I got an “A.”
It was fifth grade, a moment
of glory. I was the ambassador

to reality for one day. I got Whip’n’Chill,
pot roast and bald potatoes. I sorted my vegetables
and brontosauruses. I tossed my baseball
to the ceiling and caught it
in my fielders mitt. I didn’t belong
to The Boy Scouts. The acolytes’ guild met in a marsh.

I typed my secret newspaper
on an antique Remington in a humid
basement. The pennant of the 1922
collegiate football champions
hung and swung from the rafters
of music that sounded like daffodils blooming in spring

on the radio. Just about now, the springy
other side of the river dissolves into the marsh
shaded by oak, elm, maple, chestnut
and hickory, a thick green canopy.
Wind hisses through my leafy veins. I’ll let
crickets chirp bossa nova through nasal doldrums.

Sometimes you just feel lucky. I can’t eat
anything with sauces without becoming springy
and messing myself up. I am numero uno.
No, really. I rub witch’s cream
on my left leg, below the knee. There are
tacos made with limes, farmer’s cheese and pinto beans.

The tin man rumba dances with two flying monkeys
dressed in Slovakian vests in a cornfield.
My eyes roll like pool ball sparks and go blind.

 

Rustin Larson’s writing appears in the anthologies Wild Gods (New Rivers Press, 2021) and Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections from Thirty Years (University of Iowa Press, 2023). His poems have appeared in The Galway Review, The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Penn Review, North American Review, and Poetry East.

Abbie Doll is an artist residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her written work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, Full House Literary, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch, among others.