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Flowers arranged in bottles
Photo by James Cousins on Unsplash

Poetry | May/June 2022

Child Craft, Vol. 1

By Theresa Burns

Nights she read
from it,
shared her beloveds—
 
her tired voice
graveling down, 
 
her voice a well
that drew us
in and down 
 
and echoed back 
its limits, 
 
the pages overlaid 
with scribbles, 
Spirographed
 
and bulls-eyed,
its dull orange spine 
shattered 
 
from using it 
as home plate, as placemat,
 
as food. Still
the poems 
thrived there, 
 
the verses stained,
the pictures, like the world,  
 
unambiguous—
clear blue
for children's eyes and sky,
 
red for cloaks,
 
and purple for the cow,
the lines assured us,  
we'd rather see than be.

2 replies on “Child Craft, Vol. 1”

Gayle Lauradunnsays:
June 14, 2022 at 5:33 pm

My mother had the whole set of Child Craft books and read to me endlessly from them. They were my introduction to poetry.

Reply
Kathleen S. Burgesssays:
July 18, 2022 at 8:46 am

A delight. I read Child Craft books whenever I went to stay with my Aunt Mary, who’d bought them for her two girls and two boys, cousins who didn’t seem to be interested in them.

Reply

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