Mason Crawford, Summer 2016

Blue Jeans
Mason Crawford

I still feel ill
saying your name,
Miss

Or I should start calling you Mrs,
Does your husband
Taste the thieving of innocence
On your lips

Feel my young
Round, boy belly
On your hands

Does he know about
Your hunger for children
Mrs

See it in your eyes
How you long for the
Feeling of
An eggshell body

So
Smooth,
White,
Fragile

Mrs,
I know you’re state’s away
But I can still feel your
Breath in the nook of my neck
Your spider hands
Crawling down my ribcage
The tug of the blue jeans

I still fear one day
you’ll come back

I had to tell somebody

You were the first
Of my sorrows

Now,
the last to be fixed

Mrs,
I’m sorry
For crumbling apart
Everything you made of yourself

I hope though
the police coming for you

Don’t leave leftovers.

Mason Crawford will be a senior at Tunkhannock Area High School. He’s a member of Breaking Ground Poets, and the Youth Speaks-Brave New Voices team. Mason has been twice published in Poets of NEPA. He’s recently participated in the Dialogue Arts Festival, and spearheaded the bringing of the Outlast Project to North East Pennsylvania. If he’s not writing poetry you can usually find Mason binge-watching Julia Roberts movies, or figuring a way to pass his math class.       

*IMPORTANT NOTE*: Mason and his fellow Breaking Ground Poets team members are in need of help at the time of this post. If you can spare a few bucks, please pitch in and help send him and his team of six talented young writers and performers to the historic Brave New Voices International Slam Festival this week in Washington D.C., where teenage poets from over 50 cities gather to compete and build community as writers.