NOBODY DROWNED
Carol Potter
from Short History of Pets (2000)
It's the green river of a childhood
in which nobody drowned.
No legs were broken.
None were shot through once
the shotgun went off in the house
three inches from the brother's head.
Someone's father hung himself in a red barn.
Sucking her thumb in third grade,
one girl pulled her hair out by the roots;
she was bald at the crown,
but nobody drowned.
A drunk father wearing ice skates
driving a tractor was hauling
a wagonload of children behind him.
There was one divorced mother
who smoked and had three names.
Teacher smacked a body's head
against the wall.
Six cows were hit by lightening,
one run over by a truck,
three killed by dogs.
Two trucks turned over, a tractor
rolled down hill, crashed
into the woods,
but nobody drowned.
The brothers and sisters
chopped the heads off chickens,
hung frogs on wire fences.
They leaped from second floor
windows, practicing how to fall.
Sometimes the father pounded them.
Sometimes they pounded each other,
but nobody drowned.
One boy stuck another boy's foot
to the floor of a silage wagon
with a pitchfork, and the girls
rode their horses
into the river. Hand buried
in manes, pressed against
wet flanks, they floated
in the green river
bank to bank, and nobody
drowned.
Carol Potter
from Short History of Pets (2000)
It's the green river of a childhood
in which nobody drowned.
No legs were broken.
None were shot through once
the shotgun went off in the house
three inches from the brother's head.
Someone's father hung himself in a red barn.
Sucking her thumb in third grade,
one girl pulled her hair out by the roots;
she was bald at the crown,
but nobody drowned.
A drunk father wearing ice skates
driving a tractor was hauling
a wagonload of children behind him.
There was one divorced mother
who smoked and had three names.
Teacher smacked a body's head
against the wall.
Six cows were hit by lightening,
one run over by a truck,
three killed by dogs.
Two trucks turned over, a tractor
rolled down hill, crashed
into the woods,
but nobody drowned.
The brothers and sisters
chopped the heads off chickens,
hung frogs on wire fences.
They leaped from second floor
windows, practicing how to fall.
Sometimes the father pounded them.
Sometimes they pounded each other,
but nobody drowned.
One boy stuck another boy's foot
to the floor of a silage wagon
with a pitchfork, and the girls
rode their horses
into the river. Hand buried
in manes, pressed against
wet flanks, they floated
in the green river
bank to bank, and nobody
drowned.