Foster Home
61
When I was six, living at my grandmother’s house,
other children began to move in.
Randy, his sisters Wendy and Mandy,
a sandy-haired kid from who knows where,
two runaway teenage girls from Nebraska.
I felt like a seasoned factory worker
unaware of any union, secure.
How long would they be here?
We had the woods to run through out back,
the way a rock thrown with torque off rusty tar
barrels sounds like a laser gun.
Popcorn strings festooned along clubhouse walls,
Christmas candles burning in the corners.
The Nebraska girl, (not that one,
the other one,
with the inch-thick cut
on her lip and the corduroy
blouse; the older neighbor kid
who kissed her said she tasted
like Marlboro Menthol and Straw-
berry hill), she taught us how to read
the future with flame, thread and needle.
The hot needle point stung me,
wondered along the lines of my palm
meandering as the highways
the Nebraska girls took off to, away from us,
Away from DCFS. At summer’s end
They traded in the sandy-haired kid for Stanley.
At two he still talked gibberish, bleach-blonde hair
cut like Moe from The Three Stooges,
hopelessly in love with sound of two.
“I’m two!” he’d say. “Hey look Grandma! I’m two!”
He inhaled deeply when he cried,
his face the color of cooked ham when he exhaled.
For the loss of Nebraska, we sought revenge on Stanley.
Grandma would fix us all sandwiches,
place them around the table.
All we had to do was tear ours in half and say,
“Look Stanley, you've only got one! And we've got two!”
When I think of Stanley now I wonder how
the montage of his life plays out for him.
Does he see his parents throwing him down the steps,
blunting him with curling irons, locking him in closets?
When he rises to defend his brothers in the People Nation,
all doing hard time there in Joliet
together for murder, assault and rape,
when he throws down the pitchfork and disrespects the Folk,
can he see the government plates on that Iowa sedan
that took him from my grandmother’s porch when he was eight?
The other night I found a picture of Stanley at fifteen,
same blonde hair, wearing a pale olive T-shirt
with circles of bleach, hugging my grandmother,
smiling, relieved, free from Boy’s Home.
Just before my grandfather took the picture
Stanley’s head leaned slightly inward,
slanting to my grandma’s breast.
I visited that weekend, and I remember how he looked at me.
My grandfather looked away, I shook Stanley’s hand.
His hand squeezed mine firm, without a word the handshake seemed to say
“Everybody here step back away”, it seemed to say. “This is my house.”
Copyright ©2011 Mark Farnsworth
Note from the Author: This is the title poem in my recently published collection of poems. Click here to buy the book. Thanks in advance for your consideration!!
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Thank you, Larry!
Wow..Thank you for sharing your childhood? You are so articulate..I have thrown your name out there to a good friend who may be coming by for a visit..Your style reminds me of him..Twilight Lawns..is British..You I believe would love his humor and style of writing as well..Take care,
Sunnie
Thanks Sunnie for reading and the possible referral! What I love most about this site is the random opportunity to meet people from all over the world!! To your question, this is "loosely based" on my childhood. I did live with my maternal grandmother for four years (age 4-8) who was a foster mother. And all the children named are based on actual children that came through those doors, including Stanley. I lost track of Stanley's exact whereabouts, but based on my experience working as a drug and alcohol counselor for teenage boys, sadly, it doesn't take a wild imagination to figure out what happened to him.
I heard about you from Sunnie. She is right, you are good.
Thanks, Becky! I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!
Mark, I was referred by Sunnie Day. I am glad of that. This is lovely writing. I wasn't expecting what I found, and now I am wondering of whom is is reminiscent. A very smooth and lovely style.
Thank you very much, Twilight!
Your narrative is beautifully engaging, I couldn't stop reading, had to know how it ended. Deeply touching.
So glad I found you through via an Emerald Wells Cafe hub. Thanks Mckbirdbks.
Peg
Peg, thanks so much!! It's really gratifying to see how much this particular poem is attracting attention. My recollection of this period of my life, especially the part about Stanley, is I've been trying to tell for many years now!
Over the years, I have had foster kids, adopted kids, step kids, stray kids, nephews and nieces in my home. I have always wondered how it might look to the kids and sure I wasn't in a place that anyone would really say. It is a pleasure reading your poem.
Leeann, thanks for the comment and a part of me wants to say thank you on behalf of all the children you've helped over the years (but I realize that's a bit presumptious of me!) I always try to remind my grandmother that she DID improve Stanley's life, for the time that the state allowed Stanley to be in her home. Unfortunately Stanley fell through the cracks in the system. To me, it's unforgiveable for human beings to fall through cracks. This poem was my attempt to express that frustration in a way that would have at least some kind of redeeming value.
I completely understand mjfarns. It amazes me how people fall through the cracks depsite the enormous amount of help they ahve received from others. It is sad but really you can only help people who are helping themselves. Many of these children are not old enough to help themselves so I don't feel I accomplished much of anything.I can only tell myself that I tried to leave a situation better than I found it. Time will tell if they help themselves. Your poem was lovely and I feel it really expressed this situation beautifully.
That means a lot to me, leann, coming from someone who has experienced what I'm writing about. Very gratifying! I'm probably more proud of this poem than any other I've written.
You should be proud. It's a tough subject. I have thought about writing about it myself, ofcourse I would be coming from the parent side of it, but I truly don't think people would understand. But, its cool that you do and that you successfully wrote about it. Again, good job. I am going to share your poem with a few friends. I am sure they would love it.
Thanks leann! That's very kind of you!
This is really raw. It is so good from the viewpoint of the child who has the family and is not the foster child. I love the ending even though it is disturbing. What a writer you are!
Wow, thank for you the kind words!
If you've read any of my work you know I worked in child protection for years dealing with terribly neglected and abused children. I also fostered teenage girls who suffered the condescending superiority from my own two who were too young to understand. Still, it was all for the best, or so I tell myself. Thank you for this wonderful and vivid recollection from one foster sibling. Beautifully written, heart breaking and all too human. Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Lynda
Lynda, I can't express how proud your comments made me feel. I must confess that I have NOT read your work, and for that I apologize. I will soon rectify . . .
This is beautiful. I really could imagine myself watching as these events played out and your grandparents took more children in. Your words are so colorful and eloquent. Stunning.
Thank you cclitgirl! Perhaps the events seem real because they are, shall we say, "inspired" my true events. There were really was a little kid named Stanley who came to live with me when I was six, before I was too young to really understand that my grandmother was a foster parent. Sadly, the truth about Stanley is more disturbing than my fictional retelling. He came to our house that summer when we has two in nothing but a hospital gown and a cast on his arm, with cigarette burns on his forearms. It was a very sad day about six years later when the DCFS came to grandma's and took him back to his mother, who, along with his father, had abused him. I feel like Stanley's life was tragic, but maybe if more people learn about what happened to him, and his memory lives on, (I'm quite sure Stanley is either dead or in prison for life), other children won't have to suffer like he did. Anyway, thanks for reading the poem and commenting. I hope you'll consider buying my poetry collection (see the link at the top of this hub), a book that I titled "Foster Home" as a way for me to privately honor Stanley.
maven101 Level 5 Commenter 9 months ago
Beautifully written. The rhythm of this expressive narrative is pitch-perfect to my ear...I'm reminded of Portnoy's Complaint in style and context...
You should be encouraged to continue writing with this wonderfully free-flowing and articulate style with your simple, direct sentences and using few adjectives.
Voted up, way up...Larry