HEAVEN, 1963
It's my favorite photo--
captioned, "Daddy and His Sweetheart."
It's in black and white,
it's before Pabst Blue Ribbon,
before his tongue became a knife
that made my mother bleed,
and before he blackened my eye
the time he thought I meant to end my life.
He's standing in our yard on Porter Road
beneath the old chestnut tree.
He's wearing sunglasses,
a light cotton shirt,
and a dreamy expression.
He's twenty-seven.
I'm two.
My hair, still baby curls,
is being tossed by a gentle breeze.
I'm fast asleep in his arms.
— Kim Noriega
from Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets
(Huntington Beach, CA, Tebot Bach, 2006), 117
It is very difficult and expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother and father did to you while you were putting your first six birthdays behind you.
~ Bureau of Social Hygiene study, 1928
Love/Life Poems
