~
When I grow up
He killed his ex-girlfriend
with a stun gun
to the back of the head
while she was tied to a chair
and he was high on cocaine.
As teenage neighbors
we played wiffle ball,
caught frogs in the creek,
and lit off fire crackers.
He was a little unkind to his dog,
and he wasn’t the type of kid
who treated the smaller kids nicely,
but I never saw such propensity.
When I was even younger,
the first neighbor I remember
used to sneak his father’s gas can
from out the garage, pour
a little rivulet down the alley,
and light it so he could watch
the fire flow.
It was no surprise when
in high school
he burned down a house
in the neighborhood
over a minor grudge.
It was almost a relief.
It’s hard not to yearn for such
clear signs when you sit on the couch
as the sun sets and your coffee cools
on the bookshelf.
You watch your children
chase the cats with raucous giggles.
Maybe your daughter picks up
the toy stethoscope and listens
to the heartbeat of a plastic banana
or your son pretends that
he is a dimetrodon truck driver.
What do you want to be when
you grow up? The sun.
That’s a bit ambitious. What if
That wasn’t possible? A firetruck.
You never know what they will say,
only what they won’t:
I will be the reason you sleep
with a loaded gun in the closet.
I will be the reason your wife
is scared to walk downtown
alone at night. I will be the hand
that severs the tie between
child and world, that leaves
the world aflame and fans
the cinders when winter comes.
~
Andrew Najberg
Andrew Najberg is the author of The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Easy to Lose (Finishing Line Press, 2007). His individual poems and short fiction have appeared in North American Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Cimarron Review, Louisville Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies both online and in print. He teaches creative writing and other courses full time for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and he received his MFA in creative writing from Spalding University. Find him at Twitter @AndrewNajberg or Facebook @AndrewNajbergAuthor.