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April is National Poetry Month, a time when we celebrate poetry and recognize how it has shaped American culture. This year, KUT is participating in National Poetry Month by sharing poems written by students in the Blank Page creative writing programs at Kealing and Fulmore Middle Schools and the Writers' Workshop at Rawson Saunders School. You can read the and listen to the poems here, and you can also listen to the poems read on KUT 90.5 FM throughout the month of April.

kiko

Read by Rebecca McInroy

I remember

When I was two and I waddled around

and you ran me over and knocked me down

And you slept in my room and devoured all my Legos

and you threw up

my room looked like the day after a Mardi Gras parade

I remember

When we would play catch in the back yard

And you in the bed of the old truck,

with your hair streaming in the wind

on the way to grandpa’s

on that special Valentine’s Day when I got a lollypop

I remember the stories:

Your eating my mom’s expensive red boots

twice

Your eating the rope that we tied you up with outside of the store

And all the upholstery in the truck when you were little

When our other dog taught you how to bury bones in the garden

I remember

When it got hot in the summer

and we bought you a kiddy pool at a garage sale to lay in

And my not understanding why you would chew your legs

and make them bleed and have to wrap them up with tape

And we let you out of the gate in the back yard and into the soft, shady ivy

because you could not walk,

your back legs could not support you

I remember

The last time you stood up

You tried to follow us out like always

And you fell

You looked at me with shame in your eyes

I had to look away.

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