"MAYBE YOUR TONGUE IS A FISH"
Jane LeCroy

book of 99 poems & 11 paintings

Self Published © 1997

(out of print)

THERE WAS A LOVE CHILD WENT FORTH 1973

The velvety breath of marijuana forever circling my house
My father's gentle hands loving his guitar
The sweet smoky smell of my mother's black hair
Her bare feet and brown hands
Her womb full of my brother
Then Gary's tiny new hands on my face

The tap of the bottle against the mug
Spilling pink Pepto-Bismol
on the oriental living room carpet, the stain
My purple tricycle
The dreaming forest echoing the thruway
that tumbled by like ocean waves
Stripping naked in the woods
how white my body was against the earth
The wild strawberries that mysteriously gave me poison ivy
Watching the deer's hot breath as they ate in winter

Papa Hutt, dead, open coffin
Our basement with egg cartoned walls
The giant saw dust camel and stick horse
The hiss and winter of the radiators
Gary and I in the blue fish baby pool
underwater he believed my hair was angels
My father disappearing for hours into the basement
The two married trees that stood in the yard
My two married parents
My mother crying

My mom, like a circus performer
eating marshmallows that were on fire
The huge building blocks at my nursery school
Falling down the yellow and blue twisty slide at King's Park

My kindergarten that was a boiler room
and smelled like burning dust and manila paperThe brown and yellow flowered kitchen wall paper
Falling down the wooden stairs with Gary because
we dusted them so clean and slippery
while Rory was being born
Uncle Eric, 22, shooting himself in the head
Rory getting the red and yellow truck from the top of the coffin
Grandpa canoeing the ashes out with a six- pack
to scatter and sink in the Hudson
My grandmother's green lumpy rug
that I could smooth one way and push on to make a picture
Andrew Lynch's red umbrella
our first kiss near the stove
My mom tying yellow pencils to my overalls, with
colored ribbons, so that I wouldn't lose them
Watching my brown braids swing in front of my face
on the bus or running
Running
The windy walk to the bus stop

The sound of hate from a man's mouth
The sting of blacktop on the palms of the hands
Trying to collect enough honeysuckle to drink
My Ernie and Bert birthday party blowing away in the wind
The weight of my lunch box with a Thermos
as opposed to without one
The way cocaine looks on a mirror
when it's the only thing my father lit in a dark room
It's a dense galaxy made up of tiny stars.