to make a story
about a boy—
the way we make
cookies with grandma,
he says, waving
his fists as
they knead the air…
To a boy,
a story is a world,
like a house or
our neighborhood
which opens onto
the woods where we are
always saying
fairies and smurfs
might live—
how much I’d love
now to take us all
to such a forest
away from the dying…
the worlds that are
stories that the boy
cannot yet see
making nooses
and fires that burn
fiercely to snatch
fingers and tongues
but not the will
to tell more tales.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 5.
Genevieve Creedon is a poet, scholar, and nonfiction writer. She earned her MFA from the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. Born in Montreal, she has lived in Connecticut, New York, Maine, Michigan, NJ, and, most recently, Indiana, and enjoys exploring the worlds she encounters with her canine companions.
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