Amy Gordon
Monsters
I do not want to see monsters
with their pale faces.
I do not want to see monsters
with their pale faces and ordinary haircuts.
I do not want to see monsters
with their pale faces and ordinary haircuts,
their pudgy fingers holding clipboards.
I do not want to see monsters
with their pale faces and ordinary haircuts,
their pudgy fingers holding clipboards,
pushing needles into children.
I do not want to see monsters
with their pale faces and ordinary haircuts,
their pudgy fingers holding clipboards,
pushing needles into children,
breaking bones because they can.
I do not want to see monsters
disguised as men and women
who look like you, who look like me,
who go home each evening to their gardens,
after pushing faces in the dirt.
Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).
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