for a bottle of red
a coat hanger
the school gardener
would make us boys a
skeleton out of
that coat hanger
working with pliers
a bunsen burner he
bent metal round
around through gave
wire ribs a pelvis a
skull it was a game
the shed was hot
you had to unlink
his thigh-bones to
make him dance he
burnt your fingers
the gardener took off his
vest remember the
smell of black-orange
metal he gave you a
mug of warm wine
how does a skeleton
dance anyway you
could feel the pliers
on your thigh-bones
the bunsen's flame
do you still play his game
boys have you seen
metal glow brighter
since those shed-days

About This Poem
"It's hard to say where this poem came from. It's part memory, sure, but reading it back now, it also feels a bit like an incantation. Perhaps I wanted it to act like a sort of poetic charm and invite the reader to become one of the boys I went to school with, went to the shed with, so that we would remember together what happened there. But then again, perhaps poetry is just as slippery as trauma."
-Richard Scott

About Richard Scott
Richard Scott is the author of "Wound" (The Rialto, 2016). He lives in London.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.

(c) 2016 Richard Scott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate