This Is Our Currency

Moon pie eyes leaden with Easter dinner

leaning heavily Nanny's upstairs bathroom door

swings open too fast and Uncle Bernard's backwards.

Sink-high ruddy, sweating, pants down

from inside the porcelain cracks and I sharp

back away snap shut.  He would have

waddled, pulled to arrive so quickly

face forced through the chain peeping,

cartoon bank robber.  I was only eight.

Shamed faced awkwardly Englishman in

John Wayne—Pardon me, little lady.  I crimsoned.

Downstairs and fixed on the paisley carpet,

he shuddered back and we neither said a word

through rum-soaked trifle and for twenty years shrugging

I thought that's how he brushed his teeth.

Now you.