21 November 2011 | Vol. 10, No. 4
What Kind of Mysterious Orphan Are You?
With your Amish clothes
and your bakelite eyes.
Your towhead and your devil caw.
Your overenunciation.
That wink of peril
in the second act
that full-boils in the third.
But it's not a movie, you say.
I'm really an orphan.
Starving, clingy,
xylophone bones.
I've whittled my teeth
into miniature skulls.
Skulls inside my skull.
I'm here to eat
whomever I find.
About the author:
Bradley Paul's second book of poetry, The Animals All Are Gathering, was selected by Jean Valentine for the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and was published in 2010 by University of Pittsburgh Press. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Pleiades, 5 AM, and numerous other journals.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Bradley Paul at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 10, No. 4, where "What Kind of Mysterious Orphan Are You?" ran on November 21, 2011. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
