Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published in BlueFifth Review in 2007

  

First Sonnet

When the family crowded into the Summer Street kitchen

I was all hers for a while: belting out God Bless America,

cheeks aglow, loud as Kate Smith on the Ed Sullivan show,

or the special birthday song we learned from Big John and Sparky

on the little Bakelite radio. Tucked tight within her arms I basked

in her smile, the cloud of her powder scent and smoky breath,

what I’d later know to be bliss, afloat on the feel of her lips

on my cheek, her drawn out kiss, as the aunts and uncles laughed

and clapped for us both. Most of the time it was more like

I was a mouse, eclipsed by the whirr and squeak of the clothesline,

the whish whish whish of the scrub brush in her fist, a pest,

a maker of dirt underfoot, scuttling around the house, furtive

and filthy as soot: watching her from the corners, struggle against

the enormity of her unhappiness, and the awful swelling of the mess.