I Kept Allison Kramer from Harm and Danger

Jeff Tigchelaar

(Recurring dream, circa fifth grade)

or harm at least               because danger
was always nigh              because strangers
invaded the playground               time and again
              and tried to whisk Allison away
keyword tried
because I was there        as always
sometimes they got her
              almost to their car
but I came chasing after              and showed them
              what happens to those who take Allison
triumphantly I carried her back
to much applause and buzz         but Allison and I
we just                needed time
                             and so we retreated alone
to that gap                       in the fence
between the little kids’ side and the big kids’ side
              where it was all overgrown

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Jeff Tigchelaar is the author of Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour (Woodley Press, 2015), winner of the Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal (as runner-up for the Adrienne Rich Prize), Harpur Palate, Hobart, Hawaii Pacific Review, Heavy Feather Review, Rattle, Rhino, The Museum of Americana, New Ohio Review, and North American Review, as well as in Best New Poets, New Poetry from the Midwest, and Verse Daily. Recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, he works at a library in Huntington, West Virginia.