Thank you, J. D. Salinger

Mrs. Glass, who did some of her most inspired, most perpendicular thinking on the threshold of linen closets, had bedded down her youngest child on the couch between pink percale sheets, and covered her with a pale-blue cashmere afghan. Franny now lay sleeping on her left side, facing into the back of the couch and the wall, her chin just grazing one of the several toss pillows all around her. Her mouth was closed, but only just. Her right hand, however, on the coverlet, was not merely closed but shut tight; the fingers were clenched, the thumb tucked in -- it was as though, at twenty, she had checked back into the mute, fisty defenses of the nursery. And here at the couch, it should be mentioned, the sun, for all its ungraciousness to the rest of the room, was behaving beautifully. It shone full on Franny's hair, which was jet-black and very prettily cut, and had been washed three times in as many days. Shunshine, in fact, bathed the entire afghan, and the play of warm, brilliant light in the pale-blue wool was in itself well worth beholding.

(Franny and Zooey, 1961)

Iraqi Children

Tigris River, Near Al-Qayarra

Say Goodbye, My Baby

There was the bronze horse
rearing at the courthouse,
the no-name soldier
waving a saber.

There was the barefoot boy
who took you swimming
in the blue hole north of town,
below the high bluffs
the Yankees couldn't take.

He gave you
a bailing twine bracelet
for your left ankle
and drew a horse of spit
for your right ankle.

There was your grandmother
who told you the story of shoes
designed by Perugia
she bought in New Orleans,
the story of a gray-blue gown
made by Madeleine Voinnet
she called, De La Fumee.

This horse is me, the boy said,
as sure as Orion swings night
like a sword into the river.

This horse is me and you
will know my pole-barn dreams
long after you leave
this one-horse town.