1962 Birthday Party
A purple party dress tied with a big
bow in back and girl friends wearing frills,
crowding around the basement card table.
Dad has the camera rolling, recording me
eating cake; chocolate smears my cheeks,
frosting Mary Ellen calls it. She knows
good cooking terms as she, her sister, and
her mother bake sticky buns,
indecent with melted brown sugar,
jewel-like with drizzled caramel. Beside me
Kitty pulls at the pile of presents. I say
leave them alone, a bully tyrant at
my own party. Susie says, Blindfold me
now, I want to Pin the Tail on the Donkey?
Open packages now! I revert, and not
prettily, to kindergarten age. Mother
quickly takes me aside, counseling quite
reasonably as to how to treat my friends
Susie and Laurie. My sister is there
too, pixie-like in dotted Swiss. My
underwear shows in one photo. In
various pictures, I look like I'm jumping
with a jump rope, but there isn't one. I'm
xi, one year more than ten, Mary Ellen says,
yellow hair wild as she tosses darts,
zinging them across the room at the target.
Nancy Canyon
A purple party dress tied with a big
bow in back and girl friends wearing frills,
crowding around the basement card table.
Dad has the camera rolling, recording me
eating cake; chocolate smears my cheeks,
frosting Mary Ellen calls it. She knows
good cooking terms as she, her sister, and
her mother bake sticky buns,
indecent with melted brown sugar,
jewel-like with drizzled caramel. Beside me
Kitty pulls at the pile of presents. I say
leave them alone, a bully tyrant at
my own party. Susie says, Blindfold me
now, I want to Pin the Tail on the Donkey?
Open packages now! I revert, and not
prettily, to kindergarten age. Mother
quickly takes me aside, counseling quite
reasonably as to how to treat my friends
Susie and Laurie. My sister is there
too, pixie-like in dotted Swiss. My
underwear shows in one photo. In
various pictures, I look like I'm jumping
with a jump rope, but there isn't one. I'm
xi, one year more than ten, Mary Ellen says,
yellow hair wild as she tosses darts,
zinging them across the room at the target.
Nancy Canyon
1 comment:
Sweet treat on you birthday. Happy to see you're doing NaNoPoMo, too! 90 42364696
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