Portside

The Economy of Swallowed Knives

By Kyle Dargan

I warn an auditorium full of children, 

Do not try this at home. Then I begin

ingesting skewers. Unintentionally,

I enlist their youthful volition

into the war against waiting to grow up.

On the drive home, they pelt their parents

with salvos of Can I and Please, while fathers

being fathers, retort, When you’re grown,

paying your own bills for your own roof,

you’ll be free to live as foolhardily as your heart

desires. There: the moment of escalation—

suddenly their every waking hour becomes

a struggle to buy back their right to self-

destruction. Lemonade stands and lawn

mowing. Frozen meat pucks flipped

under sallowed arches, endless refolding

of denim. The children sprout acne and fuzz

as their piggy banks pudge. Their minds

have long since forgotten the death-defying

blade sleight that followed my disclaimer

years ago.

They are teenagers. Everywhere

something else shouts This could kill you,

and, achingly, they answer Yes. They can

taste it: tattoos, cigarettes and sex—

any form of flirting with mortality.

Beneath youth’s aegis, they believe

themselves mighty, no matter how poor,

but soon enough they are adults renting

efficiencies and driving jalopies—stretching

dimes for the privilege of being grown.

See how this economy needed no help

in tailoring their malaise. What next?

Heat assignments for the middle-class

scramble to obfuscate death.

Then kids of their own. Then the rest.

This poem was first published in Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern, 2018).