OK.
Here we go.
Now I'm going to read you a prose piece.
I've been writing these short prose pieces
and this one is called "The Magic Tricks."
It comes from a book of mine that's out in May.
"The Magic Tricks."
"My brother pulled a penny from his ear
when I was six years old, I was 5 and learning to tie my shoes,
because my mom said it was now or never seeing
that I was already finished with an unruly year of kindergarten
where I had managed to learn the primary colors but little else.
Mom was tired of me getting my shoelaces caught
in the spokes of my tricycle, tired of having
to wipe her hands on her apron and trudge down
the steps to set me free.
My brother Rick said watch this and a bottle cap
that I recognize from my collection
then appeared from his nose.
I touched his nose softly amazed that my brother could
do something other than beat me up.
When he coughed and a dry apricot rested in his palm,
I looked into his mouth.
When he scratched his hair and a twig fell out,
I smoothed his hair.
How did you do that, I asked.
I coughed a dry cough three times
but only the sour smell of just eating pickles issued
from my mouth.
I scratched my hair and an oily film waxed my fingertips.
Magic, he said and turned away.
I followed him as he walked up the alley begging to know,
my shoelaces dragging in the dust.
The tongues of my tennis shoes lapping up
fox tails and sticker plants.
Come on, Rick I beg.
Just teach me the bottle cap magic trick.
He told me to go away that he and Arnold Molina,
a neighbor kid whose arm was palsied from traveling
both ways in the ringer washer, they
were going to practice dangerous animal
magic he didn't want me to see.
He said it was magic that sometimes leaped back on people
turning them into cats or dogs.
You're lying, I snickered.
I was getting used to my brother tricking me saying things
like Captain Kangaroo lives across the street from us.
[LAUGHTER]
Annette Funicello is a fifth grader at our school.
[LAUGHTER]
And you can die three times before you're really dead.
I returned home to sit in the shade of the back porch
with my sister.
I practiced loop, bow, tug, but the laces,
black from dragging in the dirt kept getting
ordered until they look like my kindergarten scribbling.
My sister, Debra, with small fingernail polished hands
helped me untangle them and wrap the long laces
around my naked ankles.
I walked around the yard thinking
that maybe this was another way of tying shoelaces
and perhaps my mother would be satisfied
when she came home from work.
I had two days to learn to tie my shoes
or she was going to take them away.
I was feeling good about learning
to tie my shoelaces when Rick came back into the yard.
He looked at it strangely, his eyes
bugged out so the whites showed.
He said, a car ran me over and used up one of my lives.
I have two more.
[LAUGHTER]
Rick, why don't you cough and show
Deborah the apricot pit trick, I asked.
And you didn't die.
I did.
You didn't.
I did.
You didn't I argued remembering that the man across the street
from us was a plumber not Captain Kangaroo and Annette
Funicello was just a picture cut from a magazine
and tacked on the fifth grade bulletin board.
Rick coughed and a rubber ball rolled
from his mouth, the kind used in a game of jacks.
He sneezed and a jack fell from his nose.
He rubbed his eyes with his fist and two marbles gleamed at us.
I turned to my sister Deborah.
This is magic.
Rick quivered his outstretched fingers at my shoelaces
and said, I predict they'll come untied.
I took a few steps and sure enough they
tumbled from my ankles.
I was proud that my brother knew magic and trusted him when he
said let's burn down the house.
[LAUGHTER]
We had started playing with matches,
progressing slowly from burning gum wrappers to milk cartons.
Bored with these small time fires
we decided to go all the way now that we had Rick's magic
to save us.
I stuffed newspapers in the corners of the living room
and lit them with a tiny light of a match.
We stood back watching the flames leap
waist high into the air.
Deborah clapped and I leaped to the rhythm of the flames.
We were so happy that when Rick returned from the sun porch
with a crate of cherry tomatoes I
had no qualms about having a war inside the house.
You missed, you coward, I shouted to Rick
as I rolled from behind the couch to the stuffed chair.
I looked over the chair dodging the tomato bullets
finding one splattered my t-shirt
and I feigned death then rose again.
You dirty coward I have two more lives.
And then the blood of tomatoes stained the walls
dripping seeds that reminded me of my sister's baby teeth.
Pete, our yellow canary, beat its head
against the bars of its rusty cage terrified.
A fire burned down-- the fire burned down
to ashes that floated in the air.
We were happily exhausted and ever fell asleep on the couch
and I dozed in the bedroom only to wake
to Rick's screaming that it was my fault. Mother was home.
And the first thing that leaped to my mind that might save us
from the biggest butt whipping since the beginning
of the world was magic.
[LAUGHTER]
I looked in the kitchen the air still dark with floating ash.
I wanted to tell my mom about how
Rick could sneeze bottle caps but decided
she wouldn't listen.
Snot ran from Rick's nose as he cried.
A lump of hair stood up on his head from being yanked.
Mom looked with eyes of fire at me and said--
and I said sheepishly, mom, I can tie my shoes now.
I hurried to the bedroom for my shoes sobs choking my throat
like a whole loaf of bread.
I was wrapping the laces around my ankles
when by magic I dodged my mother's belt
and scrambled out the window with only two of my lives
gone."
[LAUGHTER]
We were bad.
That's a true story too, the burning down the house.