Growing Up with Cerebral Palsy Revision 4

[Leanne]

Todd, I'm only going to look at the revision and I haven't read any other comments -- this was possibly my favourite to come out of NaPM and it was a great success in one of the kinds of poems I simply refused to tackle, a list.  I found it deeply moving on first read, so let's see how I go with critique today...

Revision

I. Infant
 
I began as an actuarial calculation -- though I'm sure that there's an actuary somewhere who is bubbling over with emotion, the stereotype would of course lead us to believe that this is a dispassionate beginning, and that is the reading I'm prepared to run with
back when they did figures by slide rule.
Through an alchemy of base metals,
Euclid’s perfect numbers, 
my two-pound weight, -- these lines all add to something hard and cold, a theoretical construct rather than a baby
and my mother’s rictus confused with a smile,
they determined a 38% chance. Peter Singer 
had not yet written
to reject my being a person. -- morality is such a wonderful thing when it applies to theoretical constructs, rather than babies...
 
II. Toddler
 
I crawled and continued to crawl, -- this is subtle and much stronger for it
and my mother’s world shrank
to what would never be, a withered -- I tend to feel that "what would never be" is so unsubtle in contrast that it stands out as cliche.  Personally, I'd remove it and go straight to the withered stalk
stalk, a blighted field. Children 
are not the reason for divorce. 
We mean to say, not the only reason. -- ending the strophe with a punch for the liars.  Great.
 
III. Preschool
 
I wore leg braces under my pants
so my parents would feel normal. -- the child remains a reflection upon his parents -- it is interesting and quite accurate, I suppose, to place the only blame here on the parents' need for conformity, but of course society needs people to conform so it is by extension a much bigger thing than one family's image
This was my normal. Frankenstein’s Monster
clomped like me, and didn’t know
that all babies weren’t born by lightning. -- I am tossing up with suggesting "aren't" instead here.  Although the piece is in past tense, this is an ongoing concept.
 
IV. Elementary School
 
I learned that friends happen
when you stay very still,
never break a pencil, never go -- consider "and never go" instead of the comma to change it up just slightly
to the sharpener. -- this is isolation in perfect vignette.  Friends are not made: they happen, but only if you do nothing to frighten them away.

Children aren’t innocent:
unobserved, they hunt in packs. -- "children aren't innocent" seems overstated.  I wonder what you'd think of "unobserved, children hunt in packs" or some such?
The principal said nothing when I was hit,
when my arms were held.
 
He did tell me that a human bite
is filthier than a dog's after I bit
into Mickey’s forearm and spat
blood on him. -- the different child is always the feral child.  It's easier to pretend that the difference reduces the level of humanity than to examine what humanity actually entails.
 
Now they all just walk like me
when they think I’m not looking. -- oh yes, the artistry of the ape in its natural habitat.

V. Junior High

These years are a burning fuse
for a town too small to have a McDonald’s. -- consider reversing these lines, just because the burning fuse is an image diminished by the McDonald's thing.  "In a town too small to have a McDonald's/ these years are a burning fuse".  Also, does this need to be past tense?
The acid of puberty mixed with nothing
to do made us fight. I never stopped
fighting: 138 times and then I quit
counting. -- stopping counting instead of fighting is a perfectly logical thing to do 

I started getting love letters;
that was the way girls fought. -- girls are now, and have always been, the nastier fighters
 
VI. High School
 
There was a cure for me. -- how would you feel about removing "for me" here?
Saw through the femur, and re-hamstring
like a guitar—a coin flip of normal or paralyzed.
 
I missed being able to hit someone. It felt like love.
 
Kid in a wheelchair tells me how lucky I am.

The freedom of not giving a shit
is like a flower that breaks through the pavement. -- I don't know how I feel about this close.  On the one hand, it's a solid image -- on the other, I've seen it before.  And just personally, I would have liked to see a cycling back to a mathematical metaphor, even though the poem has progressed to the organic.  Maths is nature, after all...