Junkyard Wedding

 

Junkyard Wedding

My father sings, tone deaf.
A chemist, he equates the musical scale
to the periodic table of elements. (Don’t ask.)
He loves the science of soap bubbles,
invents shaving creams, new alloys
for razor blades. Keeps the family half-broke.
Loves art, half-blind.

He buys paintings, crams the walls
like a strip-mall gallery.
Mom says: Beatnik art.
One nude, Japanese style, muff like a mink pelt
Mom stashes in the basement. One of wrecked
automobiles beneath high voltage power lines,
blue sky, scudding clouds bears the label
AUTO SALVAGE. Mom seeths:
Car carcasses in the living room.

My girlfriend gazes at the wrecks,
makes a polite remark: That’s unusual.
Mom says, I’ll give you that painting
as a wedding present. Then blushes
at her faux pas. We’re boyfriend-girlfriend,
our flower just budding but already
Mom smells the full bouquet.

Now sixty years—
beatnik junkyard and Japanese nude
grace our living room wall.
Fine art. You like? No?

…..

First published in Slipstream
Painting by Max Ganteaume