Taboos

Howard said he no longer believes the dietary codes, but he becomes sick if he eats pork. The books, the TV news, the carefully enunciating voices of NPR serve me a banquet of incest, rape, brother killing brother. The white moon walks right down the street before me, pale platters to step on and smash, and the tides have raced out so fast I hear they have gone to France for the winter. The protective bubble I once lived in burst, and you'd think I would spill myself all over the spring grass. But no. When all the doors are left open, I continue living in my cage, comforted. I look with my forever eyes to see the world safely staked down with those gleaming, soldierly ranks of metal bars..

Carol Hamilton has retired from teaching 2nd grade through graduate school in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, from storytelling and volunteer medical translating. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has published 19 books and chapbooks:children's novels, legends and poetry. She has been nominated ten times for a Pushcart Prize. She has won a Southwest Book Award, Oklahoma Book Award, David Ray Poetry Prize, Byline Magazine literary awards in both short story and poetry, Warren Keith Poetry Award, Pegasus Award and a Chiron Review Chapbook Award.