HOW IT STARTED
Miss Barratt would thwack your palm
with her two-tongued leather tawse
for asking to borrow a pencil,
make you stand in a dark cupboard
for one hour for being one minute late,
rap you over the knuckles with a ruler
for getting your sums wrong.
My school satchel lay under my desk,
if I touched it with the tip of my toe I’d be safe (not yet)
if I touched it with the tip of my toe I’d be safe (not yet)
if I touched it with the tip of my toe I’d be safe.
Not yet.
—from Rattle #71, Spring 2021
Tribute to Neurodiversity
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Palma McKeown: “I’m Scots-Italian, living in Scotland. My OCD started when I was eight years old and had a scary school teacher. It’s not the hand-washing variety, but the often repetitive doing-or-not-doing-things-to-keep-yourself-safe type. It occasionally affects my poetry in that a word I want to use might feel ‘unlucky,’ but the poet in me usually wins the day if I know it’s the best word for the poem—a victory for poetry over OCD.” (web)
