-Edwina on the inside-

    1.

My young father, a G.I. in '41

Assigned to duty, stateside in the Military Police

Came back to his house

When his World War ended.

In time, he'd show his firstborn son

The little diagonal scar on the fleshy

Fold just above the hip
Where the Nazi's fierce bayonet struck.

It must have struck somewhere in central Minnesota.

    2.

Uncle blows a puff of smoke
From his hemp-like stogie

Into the infant’s face
For the pleasure of its reaction.

Atrocities such as this were commonplace
And often captured on 8mm motion picture film

During family get-togethers, on holidays,
Or after the funerals.

There were no arrests.

Uncle's house-fussy wife

Keeps her parlor straight, unoccupied,
Tucked neatly under a taught, clear vinyl

Waiting for the presence

Of a more deserving company.

      3.

This is how the old-man's 1958 Buick Special

Was made to go faster:

Surreptitiously, drive it to Joe Powell’s farm in Tiverton,
Where Joe dismantles the stock, two-barrel
Carburetor from its manifold,

Replacing it with the thirsty four-barrel carburetor

Waiting in a shallow pan of gasoline

Next to the riven-coated junkyard dog, attached

To a short, metal-staked leash.

Raymond Bassinette’s impertinent '59 Pontiac Bonneville 

Was half-a-car length faster through the quarter-

Mile stretch on Route 6 East just beyond

The Westport town line later that night.

      4.

Years earlier, this poem-writer's teenaged sister
Arrived home from the goldmine of the Sacred Heart Academy

Entering through the kitchen with the fascinating

Edwina Mello in tow,— the door

To her bedroom then closing tightly behind them.

From the frantic activity at the kitchen sink

He is told to mind his own business.

Left standing at the cruel

Obstruction towering before him,

The sounds of Edwina's muffled laughter

And Elvis crooning "..down at the end of lonely street.."

Begin filtering their way through.

That's... the early Elvis.

                                                   Quequechan