Jennifer Reeser
Nursery Rhyme for Lazy Children
They live at bottom of the deep
In ocean waters or in fresh.
They feed with greed on human flesh.
They kill the ones who oversleep.
You never will be fully grown.
They shoot with arrows while you dream,
Then drag you down like cod or bream,
But first replace you with a clone.
They leave it sleeping in your tent.
It has your eyes. It has your cheeks.
It wakes up early and it speaks.
The tribe won’t wonder where you went.
It does your chores and may amaze.
Like you, it plays and even thinks
But very soon, your double shrinks
And it will die in seven days.
Your people will not ever know.
You’ll never love. You’ll never marry.
Your twin’s the one that they will bury
For you’ve gone where the fish bones go.
But if you listen you will thrive:
Get out of bed and brush your hair.
The hunter’s coming. Be aware
Lest you be swallowed up, alive.
Jennifer Reeser is the author of seven books of poetry. She is an author with Penguin Random House, London’s “Everyman’s Library” series, and Able Muse. Her poems, translations, essays and critical reviews have appeared internationally in
POETRY, The Hudson Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere, with new work forthcoming in
Nimrod from the University of Tulsa. She divides her time between her Gulf Coast estate and home on the Cherokee reservation in Indian Country, Oklahoma.