Was the pea underneath two dozen cushions really a pea, or a hard, painful lump on the girl's backside? If you were merely a guest dropping by uninvited or un- announced, you wouldn't expect to be offered percale sheets and a pancake breakfast. My Lola always boiled the breakfast eggs along with coffee in the percolator— when espresso machines could just as well be spaceships. But no one ever examined my hands, turning them over to check the thinness of skin; or made me lay my fingers on the table, my nails like new potatoes pushing headstrong through soil.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
