Angeline
Poet Chick
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2002
- Posts
- 27,446
Another Holiday
Aunt Zelly is five-six,
a foot of which is red hair,
a bright, sprayed confection
that towers over her birdy
frame like candy floss.
She is tiny and stylish,
just ask her! Mister G says
I'm the perfect sample size,
and she twirls to show full skirt,
little waist in wide belt.
Uncle Len is proud of her.
He squeezes my knee,
tells me knock-knock jokes.
He's the baby of the three
siblings and Bubbe smiles
on him but not so much
on Zelly who was a divorceé
and stole her son's heart.
Family secrets are crowded
at the table between platters
and the bottle of Manischewitz
with its sickly syrup smell.
They switch to the mama loshen,
Yiddish, when they don't
want us to understand,
but it's clear enough Zelly
is drunk: she cries in the kitchen
and tells Mama she's "misherable."
We're a Woody Allen movie,
a Philip Roth novel.
Is everyone's family
a cliché?
Week 46, Poem 3, Total 57
Aunt Zelly is five-six,
a foot of which is red hair,
a bright, sprayed confection
that towers over her birdy
frame like candy floss.
She is tiny and stylish,
just ask her! Mister G says
I'm the perfect sample size,
and she twirls to show full skirt,
little waist in wide belt.
Uncle Len is proud of her.
He squeezes my knee,
tells me knock-knock jokes.
He's the baby of the three
siblings and Bubbe smiles
on him but not so much
on Zelly who was a divorceé
and stole her son's heart.
Family secrets are crowded
at the table between platters
and the bottle of Manischewitz
with its sickly syrup smell.
They switch to the mama loshen,
Yiddish, when they don't
want us to understand,
but it's clear enough Zelly
is drunk: she cries in the kitchen
and tells Mama she's "misherable."
We're a Woody Allen movie,
a Philip Roth novel.
Is everyone's family
a cliché?
Week 46, Poem 3, Total 57
