This poem really causes me to think. But first, i'm wondering when the mother says "You could heal a scorpion’s sting / With its own venom" if she is saying these very words to the child, or her child is just loosely stating what the mother has said. If these words come directly from the mother's mouth, I think quotations can be put around the phrase. I think saying "you" when speaking about people in general is on the list of things that make Prof. Ellison cry. If this isn't the mother's direct quote, another way of writing this can be "A scorpion's sting can be healed with its own venom." There are no commas and no periods, except for in the last stanza. Is that on purpose? I'm wondering what causes the mother to break out the coke bottle; is it because the child gets stung and the mother needs to use the venom, or is the mother telling her child about the venom just-in-case, or as a lesson of the day? Where do the mother and child live where they have access to scorpion venom? I'm picturing Arabian people living in a desert environment. They could live in a tent-like home, and they're probably kind of poor since the mother has something she holds as important in something as easily accessible as a Coca-Cola bottle. Why is "the purpose of life" something that heals? I can see this being a very important component of life, because all beings get hurt and need some healing sometimes, but why is the venom the very purpose of our existence? In what way is "piss" dear? "Dear" as in valuable? I can see that our body needs sweat to cool it down and blood to be pumped through our body to stay alive, but I don't get how "piss" is valuable. I like how this really important stuff is inside of something as common as a Coca-Cola bottle. It's like how people say that it doesn't matter what a person looks like on the outside, because that person's insides could be completely different. I find this poem to be very thought-provoking.
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