The Arc de Triomphe as seen from
the Places des Voges two afternoons
subsequent to turning forty. Oh, no,
you can’t take that away from me. Or
can you? The sandbox, being the entire
plaza, can be escaped. Somewhere simul
taneously, the photojournalist arrives to
snap the shot (the four of us pictured w/
in the tractor tire with Mom, who somehow
has a hand on each of the four of us, more
of a steel grip, at the scruffs of our necks?
My sister’s lopsided pair of pigtails does a
kind of see-saw balancing act as a result
of the mother’s connection. “Sit still. Look
pretty. I’m no feminist, but without my
graveyard shift at the toy factory, would
this tire be filled with such fine sand?”).
This feminist fantasy goes only so far,
but what a pretty black and white photo,
the five of us never looking spiffier, four
kids in our 1970s-era hand-me-downs,
Mom somehow in one of her gingham
button-up Western shirts, circa several
years later after she’d switched from the
factory of toys to the factory of shirts,
graveyard to swing shift, carpal tunnel
problems a smoldering spark on the horizon,
like Footloose, and the glitter-laden Roman
in the tractor tire with Mom, who somehow
has a hand on each of the four of us, more
of a steel grip, at the scruffs of our necks?
My sister’s lopsided pair of pigtails does a
kind of see-saw balancing act as a result
of the mother’s connection. “Sit still. Look
pretty. I’m no feminist, but without my
graveyard shift at the toy factory, would
this tire be filled with such fine sand?”).
This feminist fantasy goes only so far,
but what a pretty black and white photo,
the five of us never looking spiffier, four
kids in our 1970s-era hand-me-downs,
Mom somehow in one of her gingham
button-up Western shirts, circa several
years later after she’d switched from the
factory of toys to the factory of shirts,
graveyard to swing shift, carpal tunnel
problems a smoldering spark on the horizon,
like Footloose, and the glitter-laden Roman
candles that usher in the demise of disco.
