Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
his car with a coors in his lap. Who’s my little dollface, he says.
Who’s my little cracked brain, my little wordless wonder. Kissing
you with his rough face, taking you home to drink more coors on the
slanting-sunny back porch. This is your yard. This is your bright sun.
This is your green, green grass.
Dad built the underground shelter in the yard because he
loves you. In wars words fall and explode. In wars everybody falls
wordless to the ground, wordless just like you. Usually wars are on
television, but when they become real, dads dig holes in the ground.
Big machines come into your yard and eat it. Strange men with hairy
arms and beautiful tattoos. But then the war doesn’t come and only
you are stella, only you and the wordless people on TV. You like to
stand on the hard wooden lid. You like to point at the big steel pipe
filled with spiderwebs and shrouded, mummified bugs. The hard
wooden lid fastened with a big rusty padlock. And then you ask dad
And then you ask him And dad says I built the goddamn thing so
when the thermonuclear war comes and blows us all to hell and back
we’ll have a warm place to go to the bathroom. Now give dad a kiss
and leave him alone. And dad’s rough face says kiss. Kiss kiss, it
says. How’d I know they’d fucking lay me off? How’d I know I’d
blow all our savings on that goddamn water trap and the bastards
would lay me off? And pulls his blue robe tighter and cinches his
blue flannel belt, just like the seat belt in his rattling car. The same
car they drove the grandma home in when the grandma lived in a
hospital with the world’s other grandmas.
The marcie has her own bed but at bedtime she lies on your
bed to play. The marcie plays like mrs. evans and points, reading you
the big red book and says This is the spider, the stone, the snake, the
sock. And her finger says Point point point. Tomcat, teddy bear,
toilet, towel, tripod, toad, and you are watching the goldfish in the
round fishbowl. The goldfish mouth moves too, just like the marcie
mouth, and you reach for it. The goldfish says The goldfish says And
you say too
And the marcie says the No! and grabs your hand. This is a
tripod, this is a toad. Now which is the tripod? Which is the toad?
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