Aught, no. 1 (1997)

Emily Millard

Catching Up with Sun

Children with their belly's full and Eardrums,
and jars full of pig's feet,
on the counter with the pickled deviled Eggs turning pink and
hands that will clamber into almost
anything will always get stuck into tall jars full of penny candys;
"bad for your teeth", its sun rays,
where it says on the container $5.00 or .50 or.10 for a fireball.  
Digging into their deep short pockets, and pulling up mom and dad's money
with tanning skinny elbowed arms,
across a living street, my stomach hurts
and turns all at once.

We'll badly bruise
and bully each other, pulling my hair.
But it's only my elder brother Andrew, with his red tousled hair
and badly constipated face; bothering us,
saying, Where ya been?,
when the
answer is " I really don't know".
Could you leave us alone?
You should slap the face of him,
  and both of his hands too,
  and tell him
  to wash up.
  Tell him to finish putting the toilet lid down, tell him
not to leave the toilet paper soaking in the bowl.
And finish paving the roads and combing his hair back and striping his
little brother.
  We knew where he was when his face was on a milk
carton. "You Whiny little brat."
But you can't,
because he's the Rev.Hinkley's son
who lives across the street.
You whistled when you wisht to God you could tell him
everything, about how you see things
and hear back to what he'd listen to.
But you'll hear, "Andromeda's over here and these are my three
sisters in the whisteria. We're very proud of them.
Pointing towards his hatrack
or a little tike's truck pulled up in the driveway
like an old elm tree that watches us in the driveway that shakes up
every one of mother's trunks and hope chests.
Spreading its branches and curling up its toes and leaves.
Shaking ageless and ephemereal in its top branches in the strong wind
of our family's oldest weathered storms, with love that we have climbed endlessly.
Today is a rainy day for thankless tasks, but we still feel our
thank you's tucked away everywhere where mom gets a wash cloth.
Tucked away and rationed from when we're small
until we're grown up and drafted.
With canned feet and macaroons,
real canned food and Macaroni.
Connecting persons to place and expressions that fit mom's face for a new dress for someone.
We'll wish you were there with us when dinner arrived for us and there was no disease,
and thought the house smelled like the inside of an old shoe, but everyone knows here what is really meant,
by its Mom's old piano lessons from when she was yours or dad's cartoons gone sour, fed, and to sleep with car tires around our middles and on our laps.
We'll just knock you out for one more family reunion, say it's done, until the next time we visit.

© 1997 Emily Millard. All rights reserved.
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