The shrink says, "Everything depends <br />on how many stuffed animals you had <br />as a boy," and my mother tells me my <br />father was left-handed and so is my son <br />and they're both named Joe whose favorite <br />stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart <br />while I, the sole constant in this dream, <br />am carrying a little girl who has a gun <br />in her hand as I climb a brick wall <br />on the other side is unknown territory <br />but it has to be better than this chase <br />down hilly streets where the angel disguised <br />as a man with red hair drives the wrong way <br />down a one-way street so he arrives late <br />at the library where his son is held hostage <br />he breaks in lifts the boy in his arms and tells <br />the one kind man he had met that he and <br />his brother would be saved but the others <br />who had mocked him would surely die<br /><br />David Lehman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/january-3-2/
