Three Poems
by Donald Illich
Poetry
Test Tube
They created me in a test tube.
They didn't want me to find out,
but I did. It must have been the way
my flesh was webbed, sticky.
That my skin smelled like rubber.
Or that the children didn't want
to play with me, calling me inner tube
Tom, messed up Mike. But now I know
why fries didn't taste like anything,
and how I could see through people's
eyes, as if they were made of a different
substance. Why fires slightly bothered me
when I put my hands through them, why
the scars speckled my body, as if they
were left there by tiny asteroids.
Now I want to get back to that test tube.
The rest of the world calls me a monster,
and we're always what others think we are.
Shove me back inside so I can separate
into different elements and compounds.
So, I can be poured out in another shape,
one that people find acceptable,
one that might even discover love.
Suburbs
Homes burned across the suburbs,
candles on the city's cake that no wind
would blow out. Who started the fire?
everyone asked, as ashes sprinkled down,
stained the grass gray. They can't imagine
anyone wanting to turn Maple Street
and Lilac Avenue into an inferno.
The people there were all nice, apt
to bake a pie for neighbors or volunteer
at the local soup kitchen. Sure, they called
the police when "strangers" entered,
when they were sure they didn't come
from around here. If someone got shot
by the police, it was because he wasn't
in his place, like a bird falling out of a nest
is victim to the big bad cat. The bones
would have to be buried in the backyard,
where the news shows couldn't find him again.
Everyone thought about the valuables
they were losing, rugs and jewels, pictures
of family, automatic rifles and ammo.
When this was cleaned up they'd track down
the criminal behind this. They'd be nice
about it, apologizing for the imminent destruction
they would suffer. How they would find
the stake in the middle of the park, pile wood
around the arsonist's body. It didn't matter
if he had reasons. They'd lick his body with flames.
Dance around him like a barbecue, slow dance
in the shadows of his hot, burning sparks.
How They Are Built
The inhabitants decorate their homes
with sticky bones and tight tendons.
Windows are eyeballs, seeing inward,
outward, while doors are two pair
of heavy, giant lungs. Visitors think
these places are bodies, as flesh
that opens up and surrenders to weather,
fall's icy storms to spring's gentle showers.
Residents don't want to be vulnerable.
They decide to close themselves up,
become a big skull that protects a brain.
What they don't know is they're not
invulnerable. That a hammer might tap
on them until everything breaks.
Like a baby their top surface is soft.
Strangers want to get inside them,
eat the organs within, take the shell,
make it their own. The eyeballs, their
sight, The lungs, how they breathe.
The bones, how they are finally built.
About the Author
Donald Illich is the author of Chance Bodies (The Word Works, 2018). He lives in Maryland where he works as a writer-editor.