Dare
My cousin Johnny and I build a fort
of fir branches and ferns in our woods
until he tires of that and says, Let’s see
how long we can touch the electric fence.
Why, I think, but step toward it,
tap the metal, feel the jolt,
and jump back. He touches the wire
the longest.
At his house, we walk on stilts, tip
his father’s trailer over with me inside,
play doctor even after his mother
finds us—me splayed out, undressed.
In later years, I stay, mostly,
out of trouble. He runs, hell-bent,
toward it.
*
Phyllis Mannan recently moved to Beaverton, Oregon from Manzanita, on the North Oregon Coast. She has published a memoir, Torn Fish: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and Their Shared Humanity, and a poetry chapbook, Bitterbrush (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Cirque, Cloudbank, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere.