when I was nine
the year my father died
and my mother started drinking
she gave me a set of encyclopedias
as old as I was
I would spend hours reading
in it, picking one out of the
alphabet and going away in
my head while my mom drank
in bar downstairs
I hated the bar and the drunks
and all the shit that came with
them, but I loved my mom even
when she forgot to love me
it was life.
I didn’t know any better
all the kids I knew had families
like mine
fucked up mean dysfunctional poor and
always drunk
we kids ran like a pack of stray dogs
stealing food where we could and
ripping off the tourists that passed
through town
but I always went back to the
encyclopedias, late into the night
with the sounds of the jukebox
waking in the morning to find I
had read all about Egypt and the
pharoses and the great pyramids
that was forty years ago
I never did thank her.
J. Masuda © 2007