In Bubble Gum Pink Reading Old Comics Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to my grandparents

in bubble-gum pink, reading old comics
we sipped our summers slowly while
the zinnias fried in the gardens.

after you are over the school nightmares
when you're being tested on the things you never read
because they weren't in the book-
the months are yours.

in seersucker dresses, white sandals everywhere
reading paperbacks by the score all the way from
Englewood Cliffs in brown paper, string, unwrapped

with a crackling like the crackling of words you
picked yourself from the garden of language.
or the SBS catalogue

and this is more delicious than ice cream:
Neapolitan striped chocolate, vanilla, strawberry
we eat quietly at the retro kitchen table
mushing it all together in a frothy heaven

while our little dog mysteriously does tricks
no one taught her yet hoping for just a slurp
perhaps, a sudden accident where the bowls slip
deliciously down and she wins the cracker jack prize,
you bet!

fresh peaches from Arkansas, like eating the sunrise,
who could describe it?
who wouldn't want a dress in watermelon colours,

cherry vanilla- it's decided.
chiffon maybe, with a beaded top
that shines like suns unnumbered.

it's just sequins, get over it a voice from somewhere said.
we squashed it like a bug.

eating Divinity candy, peaked like snow drifts,
we carry on.
and now we're on the back porch with sparklers

and it's always the fourth of july.
and we wear sundresses
while learning the scales,
on the piano we dust on Saturdays
zealously, with lemon pledge.

and reading the Reader's Digest we'll learn what to
do in emergencies, like, if you're unexpectedly
caught in quicksand

or at summer camps
where we are horrible at canoeing
and so glad to be back home

where the real summer is.
even if, we no longer drink
orange sodas every day from a vending machine
so homesick near the humid cabins.

and there's so much of it, still left!
all golden vanilla, the moon floats over it.
or maybe you muse, it's butter pecan
and it's not melted yet.

mary angela douglas 27 july 2014