Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire

Some Kinds of Reading in Childhood

S O M E K I N D S O F R E A D I N G I N C H I L D H O O D Do you remember Picture Day? Then, when the packets came back— in each child’s eyes: incomprehensible fire—; you were ordinary, in the sense of: the endangered west;— your mother wiped the windshield with a shredded Kleenex (that’s why you deserved your oily treats)— Inside the school, reading made sparks: peril, peril, peril-&-awe; outside the school, acres of signs in cellophane noon, where under the school, termites take the tasty beams into their bodies— [Incisitermes minor] delicate hairless arms . . . Save the volcanoes for later, flame-folder. You did such a good job with the maps! The world has created a sickness but the sickness is being reversed . . . Consonants can be reasoned with, but vowels start fires—now! breathing twice: Now! Here come the bandit occupiers: silence & meaning— 4 ...