country time lemonade
Liz McClure
when I was six I went with my mother and sister
to Dallas
where my aunt and uncle lived
they had an empty white pool
with a wire fence around it and
it was dry and unfinished and I couldn't go near it
but I never saw the desert
my father sang about
only a giant scorpion in their back yard
that carried her young on her scorched brown back
it was blistering hot
and we had to dump out our shoes in the mornings to
check for spiders and scorpions
who nest there during the night
and sting your feet and
some can paralyze you
it was too hot to do anything but
go to the hospital with my uncle
who had cancer
and drink cans of Countrytime Lemonade
from the shining machines in the waiting room
while he had chemotherapy
and when he came home he would sit up
talking to my mother
on the blue divan on the porch
and fall asleep in the middle of a word
|
