CHILD CARE by Joe Weil

Today, I thought we could all use some perspective on how parenting has changed—via the beautiful poetry of Joe Weil. Weil is an American poet from New Jersey, "renowned for his humor, story telling and eloquence." He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate creative writing classes at Binghamton University.

This poem was originally published in Issue #3, 2007, of The MotherHood magazine and is reprinted here with Joe's permission. Enjoy!

CHILD CARE by Joe Weil

The smoke was thick everywhere in 1967.

Libraries had ashtrays.

Nuns sucked down Lucky strikes

In cloistered gardens.

The Dalai Lama had a puff on a camel every now and then.

My parent’s junker Ford was no exception.

My sister and brother and I sat

Sans seat belt, sans safety

Sans everything

in the midst of their exhalations.

We were raised on the poison

Of our parents smokers  breath.

Spanked when we were little shits,

and kicked out doors

Promptly every Saturday afternoon

After the morning cartoons

To entertain ourselves

By playing Dracula down by the tracks,

and with real iron spikes..

No soccer moms, no corporate fathers

Tried to give us quality time..

No one protected us out of our lives,

I felt special

Because the floor of our  58 Ford

Had a huge gaping hole in it

Through which I could see all the pot holes

And highway cracks and the stray wads of chewing gum

Whirring by at sixty miles per

As we took our Sunday drive in the country

Which was really just the suburbs—

The place where Ward Cleaver lived,

Where Jeanie hid, luscious and well kept

By “master” from her nosy neighbors—

A place where a house might have two full bathrooms.

A rich person had two bathrooms.

Of this I was sure.

That was my definition.

They dressed like Sunday everyday,

And looked slightly pained when their kids

Broke a window, or listened to evil boys like Eddie Haskel.

I dangled my feet in the hole, tempting fate,

Just inches from the macadam.

A little lower and I would have been crippled for the rest of my life,

Left to push myself around in a cart

Like Jimmy the horse,

Veteran of world war two, who ran numbers for the bookie,

Who always grabbed the asses of the teen age girls,

And got away with it because he’d been a  war hero.

I imagined myself a crip, like Porgy

On WPIX

Singing “Bess, you is my woman now,”

In a deep rich bass,

Killing a man with twice my muscle mass

Because  as you know, love gives us strength.

I dangled my feet till my brother, tired of torturing

the statue of Saint Christopher with his GI Joe, ratted me out,

And my mother suggested I just drop

Into that void, just  kill myself for all she cared,

Though I knew what she meant, understood her hard ass,

Knew that  she cared

Before the age of toxic relationships,

Before love learned to speak correctly,

And forever lost its voice.