WHO MAKES THESE THINGS WE BUY
WHO MAKES THESE THINGS WE BUY
When I was too young to dress myself
my mom used to let me pick out my accessories
from the nature store at the mall
that sold crystals and magnetic rocks
and pins that looked like actual black widow spiders.
My favorite thing then was bolo ties,
the kind that fancy colonels from the civil war had,
with the two strings draped like a folded shoe lace.
I had five or six of these
each with different animals or rocks
where the tie knotted around my neck.
I don’t know what my fixation was.
I didn’t grow up in the southwest
and I had never seen any of these ties
in actual rotation on cooler role models
who might have inspired me.
I guess I just liked the idea of being
able to wear a poisonous bug
as if that was the coolest possible
function an article of clothing could have.
My best bolo tie
had a baby scorpion
claws drawn as if on the attack
encased in a bubble of hard plastic
and frozen for all time.
I wonder if that scorpion’s family
ever thought about where their child went off to.
Probably in their wildest dreams
they wouldn’t have guessed
“hung around the neck of an uneven-toothed
nine year old, dressed up for Christmas photos
and proud as the day is long.”