The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2010

Bacon

It's Sunday morning,

and my dad's job

is to cook the bacon.

We've just come back

from church and hunger

fills the rooms we share.

My job is to make the toast.

I have to shake each piece

to get the toaster

to suck down the bread.

It's a magic trick,

but I have it mastered.

We've forgotten about church

already. How they need money.

How our bodies will run away with us.

The newspapers carpet the living room.

The little kids are jumping

on our parents' bed.

My mother breaks each egg, nine,

into separate bowls,

and dumps them into the frying pans.

Then smoke, predictable.

My mother slides open the broiler

and the bacon looks up at her,

burnt skin.

We love it––

the hard eggs,

the black bacon,

my father lost in his Sunday dream.

We love it that my father is

almost with us.

Bacon.

Smoke.

When I think of what happiness is,

this is what I think of,

my father confused and wandering,

his eyes on the returning cardinals

through the high kitchen window,

the defective toaster,

my mother's pained expression.

Being finished with church and guilt,

my father failing.

JCWatson