I could have been
A SUPERHERO
my bones filled with
titanium and my muscles
sprung with the tension
found between wars.

I might have saved the world
stopped crime with
a sort of glare you’d find
in the heart of a star
and even rescued cats
from other dimensions but

I’m faulty.

So no wonder

I

f
e
l
l

-----

For hitting the tar
To sit in the car
To won’t go far

And all because
I hit the bar.

-----

my body was bending
before the fall

tree in the wind
flower to the sun
a bridge over water

that was just me
faulty

but what bends
can break

-----

Living as a kid is
living as an acrobat is
living as a stunt man is
living as a clown is
living is
tough.

I’ve had more fights with the floor
than I have with other kids
but I still
lose
every
single
time

and this time
I tripped on the bar
landed on my arm
and knew what it felt
to be a Kit-Kat

like: snap

-----

dad carried me

i could walk but
he liked to carry me
liked to look after me
all my family did
a sinuous son
a half-built brother

better to look up
at the stars, he said,
than down at the gutter
but all I saw
were clouds and thought
how he’d not carried me
since I was a baby
so how was I lighter now
than yesterday?

perhaps I was
a bag full of shopping
being returned

so like I said,
faulty

-----

I like
the vending machines
they have in hospitals,
row upon row
of spare food
so you never run out
of ways to get fixed up

I cried
when they x-rayed
my arm
which means,
in the vending machine
of me, I must be
chicken soup

-----

I’m surprised to find
the x-rays don’t change me
there and then
infusing my skeleton
with the power
to leap higher
be unbreakable or
self-repair but they don’t
instead the lady says
she can see I like sweets
so what kind of power
is that,
and what else can she see—
can she see the secret
unbroken
inside me?

-----

The t-shirt
gets cut away
from the side
to the arm
to the neck,
then peeled back—
the suit of armour
has been found faulty
but maybe what lies beneath
isn’t
maybe
they will find a living, breathing, working boy
who just needs a small fix
then to be sent back out
ready to run and jump and kick
his way through days and parks,
doing the things
other kids do
in their bare-breasted
wild-leaping
chest-thumping
adventurer ways.

-----

But hey, that’s not so bad,
a broken arm
won’t stay broken for
ever
it can even fix some things
like being invisible
at the back of class
or give you a reason
for not playing football
so I made a list
(not easy to do
with my one good hand)

Great things about having a broken arm:
time off school
a doodlin’ arm
a clobberin’ arm
get out of sports
popularity
getting signatures like
          (breathe)
     -=Lily Landry’s=-


Not so great things about having a broken arm:
getting dressed
wiping my bum
itchy
doctors
doctors
and what
they
found
next

-----

I mean,
I’m not stupid
I’d begun noticing
how people stepped
around me,
like I was the letter O
in bOy
I wanted to just B
but everyone
avOided me
and I didn’t
ask
Y

-----

Dad told me that eggs
could only be crushed
if squeezed around
the middle
and not from
base to tip

but

maybe
I shouldn’t have tested
that out
on our
parish priest

still,
at least I know
I’m listened to.

-----

I barely remember
the second visit
to hospital,
like they pulled a curtain
around my memory
and told me to change out of
my life

I do remember
walking bare-bummed
between beds,
the walk of shame past
fellow fallen faulties,
my arm still locked in place
as though forgetting
the shield
had never been there.

Can they x-ray through plaster?
I asked my mum.

Oh Joe, she said,
her whisper like an early frost,
it’s your back
they want to see

well that’s ok
I want to see
the back
of them
too.

-----

(negotiations on the fault, fix and future of the subject are conducted in a side room out of earshot of the twelve-year-old boy, like a deal between Santa and Satan the result of which is the promise of good things sometime in the future once all the pain has passed—maybe)

-----

I’ve got my back
against the wall,
and my back against
the x-ray machine
except this time
not only is it not
giving me super powers
it’s
taking
away
what
powers
I
had

soithinkitmightbeoktopanic

-----

I’m looking at my spine

it’s like using night vision
to see a mountain road

it’s bumpy and rocky and
runs into a ribcage tunnel

but whereas most people’s
are straight, there’s a bend

in mine—a turn for the worse
the doctor mutters to mum

but not, i think i hope i pray
impassable.

-----

Back at school
it’s all about my
broken arm

can i sign it
(sure)
can i punch it
(umm)
can i burn it
(no!)

I’m the best lesson
on the timetable,
an extra break
(literally).
I’m supplying
supply teacher
levels of
distraction
and totally
worth being late
for lunch over.

It’s like everyone
wants to write
their homework
on my arm
and
this must be
what being whole
feels like
and all I had to do
was break
but everything is 99% perfect when

Lily Landry
floats in.

-----

Dad took me stargazing
when I was ten,
lifted the hook of my body
in the crook of his arm
and carried me outside
to tell me how
the stars we see
sometimes take
a million years
to make themselves
known.

I remember watching in wonder
as light as the Moon

                                    r
                                     e
                                      t
                                       h
                                       g
                                      i
but Lily Landry was  l

-----

I felt the centre of gravity
shift
like a shepherd moon
making its way through dust rings
Lily Landry parted the waves
disturbed the Force and

every kid moved to one side

my arm offered itself
and even the other signatures
and doodles made space
for her perfect name
and a unicorn drawing

nothing was said
the bell rang
like this was the start
of a whole new lesson

-----

I needed to break another arm
I mean,
nobody signs the same cast
more than once
so how could I follow this up?

Oh Lily Landry, you forgot to add your number

Oh Lily Landry, can you show me how to draw

Oh Lily Landry, why did you sign next to Rufford Kelly

Hey, maybe it wasn’t my arm
I needed to break.

-----

Who was I kidding?
Maybe the ink
from all those signatures
had gone to my head

Tough Ruff was ok
(in a dumb kind of way)
if Lily Landry liked that
I’d be cool as a cat

but

the truth is
I can’t help but wish
I wasn’t so
faulty

and I didn’t know
the half of it
yet.

-----

Dad wasn’t the only one
who carried me
whenever he could

I was passed around
like a balloon
and talked about

in whispers
as though anything louder
would blow me away

be careful with him
pass him here
are you watching him

it was enough
to make me go
POP

-----

I didn’t have a pop
at my rival Ruff

it’s not my style
to fight it out

I once kept a bully talking
for twenty minutes

when all my friends
had run away

(it’s my style to run
I’m just too slow)

at the end of our talk
the bully carried my bags

though at least he didn’t
offer to carry me

I knew a talk with Ruff
could wait for another day

but when it came to Lily Landry
I had no words

mainly because
of that quick smile.

-----

you know when you walk into a bookshop
and look at all the covers on the books,
there’s this wonderful time
between seeing and reading
where a whole universe blooms
and you’ve created your own story
about what each book might be—
well that’s how Lily Landry’s smile was,
painting me the story
I wanted to write

-----

a good best friend
is like the sting in a wasp
and one time, on our first day
in this school, Fullers—Dan Fulling—
walked past, heard me being called a name,
and just roared a proper lion-gonna-eat-you roar
which scared me and the name-caller but him more so
because he ran off and Fullers ran after and then came back
roaring
with
laughter

which just goes to show
you can’t get rid
of a wasp
so the best you can do
is hope they’re
on your side
and Fullers
totally was

-----

d’you think
 i reckon
but really
 well maybe
so you don’t
 who knows
should I
 you should
but what if
 then don’t
would you
 no chance
cheers mate
 s’cool

a talk with a friend
sets everything
straight

-----

if you were
a super-hero
spine as solid
as a mountain
would you
bend to lift
a cat from a tree?

or put it another way
who rescues ants
in a thunderstorm?

everyone knows
super-heroes live
on a different planet
well I’ll tell you
a secret

so do I

-----

weeks pass and I’m still
last one picked for a football match
first one out in a game of tag
neverevenseen at a party with girls

my super-power is being
out of step
with everyone else

but that’s not bad
because I see
what others can’t

I see the moments
when strong boys cry
I can walk between

the cracks
of what friends say
and what they mean

and maybe it’s the x-ray effect
but maybe, just maybe,
I’m impervious to rejection…

-----

you sure, bro?
dunno, bro
fo sho, bro
gotta go, bro

sometimes
talking it over
with Fullers
makes everything
clearer

-----

Lunchtime.
The island oasis
on the shifting sands
of classroom changes
and substitute teachers

it’s the rock upon which
I could stand
and ask the question
of Lily Landry

I was smart
I was liked
I was
me

and who could say no
to that?
So all I needed to do was
walk the long walk
to where she was sat
and all I needed to say was

JOE,
THE HEADMASTER
WANTS TO SEE
YOU.

Wait, that’s not what I
was going to say.

-----

It’s like a surprise party
in the headmaster’s office,
my mum, my dad, my
form tutor, head of year
and two men I vaguely remember
from the hospital.

SURPRISE! We’re here to talk
about your future.

SURPRISE! We found something else
gone faulty in you.

SURPRISE! These men
will be taking measurements.

SURPRISE! Your entire life
is going to change.

When my arm was x-rayed
the radiographer noticed
with her super-sight
(great, so she gets a super-power)
that my back was bending
in the wrong kind of way
and something had
to be done

so here comes the good thing...
here comes my power word...

-----

say it once
and unlock
the hero within:
superfragilescoliosishexmeallatrocious

-----

Hidden in my power word is this:

Scoliosis

a curvature of the spine
a condition which will force me
into a whole new shape
like a newborn river
unable to reshape the land
or a tree too old
to fight the wind

Even I can see
I won’t be growing
the way other kids
grow.

-----

Yesterday I hid
inside the old me,
spine zipped straight
eyes watching for the day
to walk past showing
its smile and handing out
jobs and friends and
but that was yesterday

today my limbs don’t fit
the zip is faulty
and the day sees me
knows me and shows me
to everyone and this isn’t
a broken arm to bring the crowd
this is something
I can’t do don’t want to do.

-----

Five years
that’s all
five years

Five years and I’d be done
not fixed but
done

Meaning I wouldn’t bend
the wrong way
anymore

Which would bring
a whole new set of
problems

Five years, they said
I looked at them
and counted

-----

Five years ago I was barely a junior
five years from now I could join the army
or be married (I can dream
can’t I?)

For old people like the doctor
and my teachers, five years was just
another chunk of change
a stretch covered by statements like
doesn’t time fly or haven’t they grown

But for me it was my entire young adulthood
high school wrapped in a cage, oh
didn’t I tell you? They were putting me
in prison.

-----

Think of it like a plaster cast
they said
just like the one you had on your arm
they said
only this one covers your body
they said
but you can take it off for an hour a day
they said
they said
they said

and I said nothing

-----

And that’s where it ends. This is only the first part of the poem but I very much doubt that I’ll finish it now. I know where it would head after this but I don’t think there’s a need for the book out there.

---

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