"Child in Big Toy" by Mario Chard

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day December 27, 2019   Child in Big Toy   Mario Chard

They were calm because it had never happened before, because they thought it had, it must have, when designed,  a tunnel to fit the child but not the adult. Then how  if a child crawled there and curled and closed her mouth,  how to get the child out? Send another in. Send in  someone small. They were calm because everyone  finds reasons to be calm when there is wind or sun or  this coat at the base of the slide, it must be the child's, Come out. It's fine. Come on, now. Come out.  They were wrong. All of them were wrong. Some thought: a saw! Some thought: calm down! They were getting  somewhere with their thoughts. Part of the crowd grew angry with the other part for making a crowd, so one crawled up into the tube until his chest stopped  like his breath and he saw something wrong:  the sun made blue in the tube. Something about the sun  and black streaks from shoes. The crowd saw the half of him left out kick then kick wild, so they pulled the other  half out. They sat him up and someone groaned,  someone said Enough, now, come on. Sweetheart, enough.  Come out. Then another crawled inside, left her coat  by the slide, passed the streaks, saw the blue, smelled the plastic in her mouth that comes from plastic having caught the sun at noon, the burning soon night-cooled, a thousand black-streak tallies to mark the cycle of shoes then  wider shoes of older children pressed inside by two  to touch and make the space between them small— this one heard a sound. Someone's calling me she thought. I'm found. So she crawled back. Remembered all.  Moved aside. Another tried. Lost. Another tried.             Copyright © 2019 by Mario Chard. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "I wanted to enact the shock that often accompanies adulthood: the realization that all who reached it before are essentially grown children, even those who lead us. To that end, I wrote the poem for my country and to trouble the mystery of age." —Mario Chard   Mario Chard is the author of Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018). He teaches in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives. Poetry by Chard   Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018) "Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies" by Edna St. Vincent Millay "Things I Will Tell My Children About Destiny" by Cynthia Manick "Only Child" by Adam Clay December Guest Editor: Paisley Rekdal   Thanks to Paisley Rekdal, author of Nightingale (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Rekdal about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038