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Giving the Big News
by Christopher Crawford
There were two kids like me
and someone's curly-headed younger brother by the stream, in the mulch
of sparrow skulls, wet porn and rotten blankets in the weeds.
I whispered to the brother that
poison rats, special 'cause you can’t see them
can’t feel their bite,
hide in the branches all around, and you will know
if you're bit when I rub the palm of your hand with a dock-leaf:
your skin will stain,
you want to see green, if it comes out yellow
you're dead — and I had a buttercup flower screwed inside the leaf.
So after he’d turned his hand over and looked inside
I stood and listened to the small screams
and the snap of bracken breaking in the dark
get further away. And even now I don't know
if there's a right way to tell somebody,
a way to understand.
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