-aunt Eva-

when I first wrote of Eva  (spun-

blonde beehive hairdo, spray-netted to stay put,
muscular calves, fleshy thighs and

peek-a-boo nylon

stockings, sitting on the couch

in front of the television)  it was due to remembrances

of recurring visits to my father’s house

and Eva,

married with young kids of her own

is considered now, to having then been on the young-

side of her late mid-thirties.

but the reported hemline shortness of her dress

is misleading.

it just appeared to be short because

she’s tall and weighs-in on the heavy side,
more Italian than French and I doubt
the hemline was considered inappropriate when

she bought the dress,

probably at the storied "Cherry & Webb"
Department Store on South Main where

my young mother

(and plenty of other mothers
far above her financial station)

shopped for special occasions closing-in from the near horizon;

(expensive)
apparel, neatly folded within perfumed boxes to carry home and save
with descriptive "Cherry & Webb" logo printing on their lids

and this, before (it could be argued, early proposals
in experimental gentrification) the first Shopping Mall appeared,

constructed on a large parcel of land on the wooded frontier)  but
in the here and now of this story, there sits Eva again,
near fully-clothed sitting on the couch in my father's house and

although parallel descriptions as those herein can be said of Aunt Alma,

this exposé continues about Eva, and this selected pinprick of her time on this Earth.

1017 / 1953 (?)