Hot from an Easy-Bake Oven

I ate butterfly pie

made with real honey,

wheat grass and

blueberries, blueberries, blueberries.

I got sick under an old pine tree

in front of the yellow shingle house and

found a giant moth

that I cupped in my hands to show my mom.

She said it was “A BAT!” 

I dropped it, caged it on the front porch and

charged Danny, Jamie and Michelle ten cents to see it.

“Welcome to the House of Horror,” I declared and

kissed the bat.

It became Dracula.

Off I flew on his back

hovering the moat that glowed chartreuse.

We burst through castle doors and

entered Old Lady Witkinstein’s chamber, 

pillaging pearls, potions and lipsticks.

My mom almost tripped over the bat,

so she made me uncage it and

give it back to the old man in the yellow shingle house.

He said “thank you,” and

gave me newspapers for a paper drive that I never did win, but

collecting papers was my chance to go thing-finding.

I built a hotel out of pink invoices,

bicycle bells,

torn pages from a desk-top calendar,

cancelled checks and

rusty keys that unlocked

a lobby stuffed with elbow macaroni.

I became small and

wormed my way through cheddar cheese tunnels

to the next room where

Bell Hop Jerry gave me a dollar to go play somewhere else.

Soon I had a savings and

turned the hotel into a bank that loaned money.

I approved applications with a rubber stamp

found in a silver pail in the alley at the corner of

Washington and Lincoln and

made checks payable to the milkman

who brought golden chip ice cream on Sundays and

to Mrs. Clanton who walked butterflies up the hill and

to Danny who hadn’t any change.

I made ten dollars.

I remember because

Danny’s parents wouldn’t take me camping.

They said I stole from their son.

I told them he didn’t know how to invest.

That night I learned how to fly.

I jumped through number three

while playing hopscotch at eight p.m. and

grew butterfly wings. I remember.

They still itch.