my blonde suburban mother tried to fly
in the socialite newspaper dumb show
of Bales Drive under the dry white sky
land abandoned by the deer and the crow:
co-opted by the claustrophobic cat
domestica and the slobber-jawed dog
snapping cookie kids and a flock of bat-
toting young hands fondling a green-tree frog.
mother’s mother taught the tying of shoe.
knowledge of words from father’s podium:
a word-camp of post war blood white, and blue
anger flaring soul drying sodium.
Parents cured and bored bland by the great war
smoked in mushroom deaths, found faults to ignore