Dear Lucille Ball, my mother has never had red hair
your gamine gams must have seemed so surreal
also, your chortle, your chuckle, your belly of laughs
Dear Lucille Ball, how many cigarettes?
have you ever sunbathed on your grandmother’s
homemade quilt, reading a romance novel
you picked up at a garage sale for ten cents?
how many pudding pops can a summer melt?
washing your only good feature in an infant’s tub
isn’t as hard in the summer, though lighting
the camping stove to boil water makes you sweat
then there’s the hole your son cut in the curtains
that makes it hard to keep the neighbors out
but maybe that will help with the money

Dawn Tefft | Mudlark No. 29
Contents | Eef Barzelay