A Moment Saturday in the Summer of '70

Mom is gardening

in the summer sun out back,

smoking and probing

at what might one day be lettuce, parsley.




Inside, Dad's head bleeds sweat

through the couch cushions,

sweet stained remnants

of endless bourbon daydreams.




I am manning a lemonade stand

in the yard out front,

earning some coin

from kindhearted strangers,

though I'm the one drinking the Kool-Aid.



Sis is away with friends

trying to blot out homestead time bombs,

a normal teenage girl

trapped in the body of familial dysfunction,

trapped in the bailiwick of parental decay.


We are all in our own place,

frozen in a fevered fear of fate

not yet written but already carved in stone.

Broken Bell Bottom Blues

She was perfect

in every flaw.

He was hopeless

but looking up.

Just your average

sad sack couple

born of hard shell

fecal magnificence

festering around a chicken shit

suburban core.

This early morning quiet

remembrance

waxes my ears, sears my mind

silly.

Through it all

the sun still she rises

and the crows collect payment,

mockingly.

The Walmart Empire

finds its footing

even as our sad sacks fade

into avocado

deep pile purgatory,

their dancing days short-lived

yet so sour sweet.

Memorial Sap

Memorial tree sap pastes my car

until the garden hose and chamois sponge it clean.

If only memories could be vanquished

with a turn of the spicket, a touch of elbow grease.

Father bleeds into my mind's eye,

all indigo camel, jaundiced bottom shelf;

Mother's wheels grinding behind him,

all stink-eye pasty, acid tongued whiplash.

People say I have her nose and self pity;

I have his eyes and liver.

The spitting image, but it matters little.

Dissolving ghostly bygones

into the present tense,

I breath a sigh of relief half restrained

and go about my day,

these remembrances pasted still to my tomorrows.