What Light: This Week’s Poem: Margaret Hasse
"What Light" presents a new poem by a Minnesota poet every week. The work is chosen by a jury of writers, publishers, and editors, and sponsored by Magers and Quinn Booksellers.
BOUNDARIES
Charlie wakes and BAM –
hits the raw deck of boyhood
running and making noise.
With a sheet, he tents his morning
erection, then terrorizes his brother
by breaking into the bathroom naked.
He fires his golden pee into the toilet,
pretends to dribble his wad of pajamas
down the hall, shoots into the hamper:
SCORE! tipping over the basket.
He prongs his pancakes at breakfast,
takes his enormous energy off
to grade school.
I lean against the front door,
facing an empty house,
remembering how in his sleep
my little guy is still genderless
as a piglet with eyes sewed shut.
I stand by his bed with a mother’s gaze,
but a newspaper story I read
about a parent having sex
with her child taints my ease
in his young jazzy maleness,
in his enthusiasm for everything,
especially for me.
How to give up our bedtime kisses? –
Let’s make a movie, he says,
throwing his arms around me,
closing his eyes, and pressing
his Valentino lips fully on mine.
Biography
Margaret Hasse is a poet, teacher, and independent consultant to arts, education, and community non-profit organizations. Originally from South Dakota, Margaret moved to Minnesota in 1973 after graduating from Stanford University. She gained an M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota. For more than 15 years, she was involved as a teaching poet with programs such as Arts & Corrections, COMPAS Writers in the Schools, and The Loft. Her publications include Stars Above, Stars Below (New Rivers Press) and In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling (Milkweed Editions). She is working on a third book of poems. She lives with her husband and two sons in Saint Paul.
