The End of the Rainbow in the Tip of a Cigarette: Poetry Gong #5

Christine over at Balanced on the Edge just wrote a letter poem in response to Jo's (Florescence) poem on poverty. From these two poems, I was inspired to write the piece below, about my fascination with a neighbor family in my hometown. They were a loud house, a full house, a messy, smelly house. I loved them.

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Dear Christine,

When old Unk lit his hand-rolled
cigarette on the sagging wood porch,
the whole clan pulled up a step.
This was the family with the kids who ate
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bread flopping
in time with shoe-less feet up and down the sidewalk.

Up and down the sidewalk my mother cried,
apron flying behind her one summer afternoon.
I’ve lost my daughter. I’ve got her bologna
with the crust cut off waiting on a plate
in our kitchen. Have you seen her? She never thought
to stop at the neighbor’s where the children took meals to go.

Whiskered stump of a man, Unk rarely spoke.
A smoking Buddha, wrapped in paper-thin plaid
and tattered polyester slacks. Uncle, grandfather,
brother, father all jammed into one man, into one house.
His tobacco stink wrapped its brown arms around
you, pulled you in like moth to flame.

My mother once told me how she and her sister
were the only kids who smelled like a barn.
Now she relishes her daily showers, bastes her body
in Jean Nate, dusts herself in Love’s Babysoft.
She is a garden, the fistful of dandelions on the neighbor’s table
next to my half-eaten bowl of cold Spaghettios.