Alexander Morgan
Birth Pains
after “Birth Marks” by Jim Daniels
Mother was confounded by Chinese, but not
by French. She ordered au jus
for its je ne sais quoi. She savored the injury of
I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This.
My father had the guile of a gopher
tunneling schemes for glory
and the follow-through
of a sunning rattler.
Mother opened her purse
to count out every penny.
Daddy used silver dollars to hint
he hung with Jay Gatsby.
He boiled down to a big-talking dreamer,
and she the girl whose typing fed them,
a conjugation of the Great Depression.
Yet, on their Salvation Army kitchen table,
they dislodged enough pennies and silver
to upend me, confused by the yelling.
I write my mother’s version
and tell it like memory.
What else with her carbon-paper-stained fingers,
his helium dreams?
