Toad, and: Jungle
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Toad
We found a gray toad coated with pimplesand put it in the garden hose. It didn’t fit
so we had to shove it in. We threadedthe hose on the faucet and turned on
the water. The hose was long, and we waited,but the toad never came out, and neither did
the water. We checked for kinksin the hose. We could hear the water
screaming. Then the toad shot out and the watercame with it. But this toad was smaller
and yellowed on the belly. So we leftthe water running and waited for the real one.
Jungle
The front pew in papa’s church was smaller than the restbecause it was next to the baptizing bath. Mama sat down
and straightened her dress with her hands. Me and my brothersat beside her and got out our crayons. My brother drew [End Page 68]
a picture of blue monkeys but he didn’t want me to see them.I drew a picture of papa’s beard and showed it to mama.
While papa was preaching we crawled on the floor playing tigers.We looked at all the shoes below the pews with tiger eyes.
Then we crawled under mama’s dress and pretendedwe were camping in the jungle. It was warmer and darker in there,
and we could still hear papa’s voice, but papa sounded softerin the dark, so we whispered to each other and tickled mama’s knees. [End Page 69]
Anders Carlson-Wee is a 2015 NEA Fellow. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, the Missouri Review, the Southern Review, West Branch, Blackbird, Best New Poets 2012 and 2014, and elsewhere. He is the winner of Ninth Letter’s 2014 Poetry Award and New Delta Review’s 2014 Editors’ Choice Prize. A recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Residency Fellowship, Andrews is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University.
