Aunt hauled me around
with her on her adventures
when I was young.
She was a free bird,
never had a real job,
only errands for her successful
mother and older brother, and,
my parents preoccupied with their lives,
a father busy with adultery,
a step-mother hiding in movie magazines,
left me at loose ends.
Aunt Elaine thought I was bright,
she stimulated my mind
in ways no one else did.
Always stacks of books by her bedside;
I think she read the whole library.
But pages would be turned only until a book bored her,
like the half-smoked butts she squashed, filling her ashtrays.
On the adventures in her world—
the zoo, baseball games, hole-n the wall eateries—
we visited champion bowlers who were lesbians,
she a closet one I found out years later.
Never married but verbally abused
her one boyfriend (her shield)
because he was a pro-union liberal,
snidely calling him her Comrade.
She read Marx but was a Republican
who loved Eisenhower, loathed Adlai.
Dressed like and was a beatnik
before they were named,
always wore dark sunglasses,
even inside, sported a tam,
frequented bars with peanuts on the floor,
quipping until her humor turned
the bar flies’ laughter into scorn
as her words became mocking fire,
forged by her boiling anger.
Too often I was the target of her ire.
The last time I saw her
when a young family man
who visited her only because
I felt her loneliness over the phone,
she was sloppy into a crying jag,
taking shots from a variety
of schnapps bottles, a rainbow of flavors,
getting drunker and drunker,
pounding the table over and over,
crying and moaning harder and harder
for every failure
in the world and her life.
Why did I continue to see her?
Why did I tell you her broken story?
Because I know she loved me
and, indeed, I loved her too.
Originally published in Rat's Ass Review