Your Favorite Poems

Hollylane · 07-22-2012, 10:08 AM

This is a pretty gut wrenching poem to me...The perspective is astounding...

Family Stories

by Dorianne Laux

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning.

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07-22-2012, 10:08 AM	#8
Hollylane Practically Lives Here How Do You Identify?: . Preferred Pronoun?: . Relationship Status: . Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: . Posts: 11,495 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 34,694 Thanked 26,362 Times in 5,875 Posts Rep Power: 21474862	This is a pretty gut wrenching poem to me...The perspective is astounding... Family Stories by Dorianne Laux I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family, how an argument once ended when his father seized a lit birthday cake in both hands and hurled it out a second-story window. That, I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger sent out across the sill, landing like a gift to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus, and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed the people in his stories really loved one another, even when they yelled and shoved their feet through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle of cheap champagne, christening the wall, rungs exploding from their holes. I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury of the passionate. He said it was a curse being born Italian and Catholic and when he looked from that window what he saw was the moment rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk deep in the icing, a few still burning.