Understanding Oliver Twist
       

Every orphanage is a womb

        stretched
        towards a bursting point.

Birth is sheathes and sheathes

        of paperwork, some signatures
        and the hopeful solemnity of a handclasp

while walking into a fluorescent-filled room.

        Oliver Twist was a 0-section
        that snuck away

and kept on running.

        He eventually learned how to steal,
        learned how to shape the idea of a mother

out of a hot meal cooked

        over a low fire,
        the starlight over his shoulders

so blindingly blindingly bright.

        I'm nothing special.
        I always touch the straw to my lips.

A person is considered crazy if

        they only have one story to tell.
        And every orphan has at least two.

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Copyright © 2015 Jeff Alessandrelli All rights reserved
from This Last Time Will Be the First
Burnside Review Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission