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  • Role Modeling (A Beginning and a Continuation)
  • Thylias Moss (bio)

I am now in Vogue.

I have been age progressed. When I fan the pages, years fly by. From cover to cover are paths from and to youth.

I am the wizard of Ozzie & Harriet.

I am in “The Birds”; my face is the face of every crow.

I can be seen inside the heads of sunflowers that I wear like bonnets, and then I come at myself from a hive that is one of my hip replace- ments.

Dana says all of this is nonsense. “You’ve had too many of those en- ergy drinks. The ginseng is depriving you of brain food; you know— oxygen like the strong kind in carbonated drinks.”

The popping is like trying to start a fire with a Bic lighter.

Maybe I’ve had some of those pop-rocks, the last at my neighborhood store where I used to buy Reese’s peanut butter cups, a free box on my birthday

—the owners knew when it was; I had the feeling that they cared about me, that Jewish couple.

Sometimes I went to Giant Tiger for them as well as for myself—lots there, candy, patent leather purses, costume jewelry. More Reese’s.

Theresa lived right across the street, had a cherry tree in her back- yard—I liked those cherries, ate them by the handful, went over there more for cherries than to play with her—which was more of an incidental than anything else. But it got me to the tree. We had a plum tree, but the plums weren’t that good. Rather small, more like orna- ments than like fruit. [End Page 344]

Her mother used to call her in—sounded like she was named after those peanut butter cups: “Reesey, come on in!” Her sister’s name was Denise—not much peanut butter there. I remember that she had red hair (that may not be true—she should have had red hair; would have looked nicer with those cherries).

I don’t know what happened to them—haven’t seen them in years. Didn’t really think of them while I was hospitalized. I’ve thought of them more recently, the cherries and the Reese’s.—I don’t know why I thought of them, but they’re in my thoughts (maybe I just need to eat a candy bar).

I did have one of my few (only 2) fights with Theresa. She broke into my house, and I caught her—after she’d helped herself to about 10 silver dollars (never recovered). She knew where I kept them in the dining room drawer; I recall beating her well, which is no reason to gloat—not a good reason, that is; I was so upset that I cried. Tears in the shape of plums rolled down my face—I would have made Arcim- boldo proud (read more about him on Wikipedia). The artist died on what would be, almost 400 years later, my son’s birthday.

My son loves fruit. [End Page 345]

Thylias Moss

Thylias Moss, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is author of ten volumes, including Tokyo Butter, Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse, Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler, Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems, and Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky. She is also a sound artist, a filmmaker, and a playwright.

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