Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography
Childproofing
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer
i.
My mother is reading a book
entitled The Fearful Child,
and in-between pages 57 & 58,
there is a tiny yellow sticky labeled STEPHANIE.
I am the section of the chapter subtitled
“Overactive Imagination, Underactive Reasoning.”
Apparently,
I am abnormal.
I have been
found out.
It is disappointing
to find that
I have not been mentioned in the forward.
Just the same,
my mother has penned me in.
The book was neatly blanketed
by A Special Issue
of Martha Stewart Living
lying underneath the nightstand
near the Better Homes and Gardens
Family Medical Guide.
One morning I found a kitchen knife
wedged between
the mattress and the box spring.
It is easier to be anthologized
than really in the dark.
I can make a doily from a tourniquet
from the queen Charisma sheets.
Somewhere there is an artist
commissioned to illustrate an erection,
trench mouth and Nasturtium;
harelips, epileptic,
Convallaria majalis,
pinworms and
an itchy anus,
common,
accidental death;
I like to read
what my mother is reading:
fragrant, wide flowers.
ii.
Occasionally, we have company
over. They ask, “Why
do you have babies
in the basement?
It is odd—
they scratch so at the door.”
My mother kept us there
when we were little.
I turned out okay.
I let the cats out.
Our two Maine Coons
live in a room
beneath the kitchen. The basement, Stephanie.
A finished basement.
Correction: we keep our cats in the basement.
It is frightening
to go either up or down stairs.
They are beginning to sound
human—like us.
iii.
Something in the paint
becomes a hospital;
the leaded cream
embalms
a private bone
black molding
certifies against
the mirrors
and their nook,
hanging here
before the desk,
before the desk, the Askins’ window—
no one ever writes without a chair,
I ruined it I think, watering
the Bonsai, that someone
loved me for.
iv.
If you want to watch TV
you can watch
the news: people say
Southeast Atlanta
police say: a woman
in her home;
a man:
survived: her
husband is:
everyone
on the news is:
off JimmyCarterBoulevard;
sent to Grady
He was:
in the closet
for three days:
she hadn’t vacuumed;
he raped her:
I’d’ve heard:
:what the neighbors said
in a quiet:
brought in,
died.
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer is originally from Atlanta, GA, and works as an artist and freelance editor in St. Louis, MO, where she co-curates the Observable Readings series. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her poems have appeared AGNI (forthcoming), Verse, Colorado Review, Chicago Review, Cimarron Review, Fence, and Verse Daily, among others. Stephanie is a compulsive baker and also very handy with a pitchfork. “Childproofing” previously appeared in Delmar.