Remember the autumn of razor blades
hidden in candied apples and peanut butter
cups? That first bite of impossible alertness?
We knew then the lifelong risk of our addiction,
each discovery in a drawer or cupboard
carrying a chilling thrill—not to mention
what we found on park benches
and food-court trays, or, once, the seatback flap
of a flight to Akron. It could be a Narnian delight
or the tempting green of something
Never-Landian. . .or it could be spoonfuls
of anything: honey, syrup, jam, treacle—
whatever trips that neural switch and triggers
the haywire surge to brain from tongue.
And this isn’t just the cane-lust of the young;
no gateway drug: it is our crystal clearing,
our dopamine, our strobe-lit stroke.
Stick me with it, darling. Be my sugar coat.
Gabriel Fried is the author of two poetry collections, The Children Are Reading and Making the New Lamb Take, and the editor of an anthology, Heart of the Order: Baseball Poems. He teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Missouri and is the longtime poetry editor for Persea Books.
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