Clara in Her Eleventh Year
Carl Boon
A girl is not a flower. She is me
breaking bread all over the rooms.
Though somehow I am not a boy,
I seethe, lie in my bed alone to whisper
thoughts to no one, a tiger
whose paws are absent, a dreamed
monkey going for the foyer.
Dad’s a strange man who makes
his poems in the dark, Mom pursues
rooms that are forgotten rooms;
each pronounces words I hold
before they dissipate, before I take
my milk and smash trombones.
I do not like to be called for.
Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.