I Hold My Father's Beer

I

Grainy 4x4 photoslike some prop deck of saloon cardsmy mother has filedin a yellowed Polaroid Flashgun #268 box.

Meant for automatic color-pack cameras,this box contains the cycle of life:film to camera, exposure to development.

Now a mini-tombit catalogues the slideshowof childhood. Pinafores and matchingtights meet shiny doll babies and mini kitchens.

Snapshot.I slide the snug-fitting lid from my cache,inhale the scent of 1972,split-level with two car garage,shellacked orange linoleum,golden shag carpet.I meet variations of myself.

I see more clearlythe woman-my-mother who gathered these pictures,writing in skate-looped lettersmy name, the year.It is a small alphabet to unscramblelike the life I have now.Dusty, itchy.

II

Most shots are of my legs.Polly Flinders, patent leathers.Fractional,I am out of focus, off center, back to the lens.

In one frame I hold my father's beer;in another, a pack of Salem Lights.Most imagesare presents: Christmas, birthday, Easter

Her photo omphalos,You grainy womb,white-washed tomb! You speak her –

don’t ever forgetmost important of allis not the person,not even the two-and-a-half-year-old girl,but the package.

III

The girl is package.Nothing insidebut the facade swing-door parlorscripted game of cards.She’ll be stuffed back into boxes.

I grow morecomfortable in the uncertaintyof being that girl, both container andcontained. In the certainty ofdust

I crave my father’s cool, wet bottle of beerand imagine the bitter sipgoing downlikea mother’s expectations.