Little Iodine
Standing harnessed in the carriage
as her heavily pregnant mother
pushes it down the street.
Going to buy another pack of the cigarettes
Mommy smokes by the window
lost in the thousand daydreams
it takes to keep her from bolting
away from Daddy,
(who always stops
at his Mama's first, and then for a couple of short ones
at Tony's with the compadres,
or at Coleman's to catch a mutton pie
and a game or two of craps,
so a golden tide of denial
can rise like a halo above his head,
as it does over those whose mothers
go to mass every day
to pray for their wayward souls,
denial golden and cool as beer itself,
and riding on peals of laughter),
while the toddler plays at her feet.
Every once in awhile saying a soft uh-huh
in response to the constant chatter to dollies,
the endless namings, the tugs
at the hem of her housedress.
At sixteen months old
Iodine, already talking in sentences,
proves this to the well-dressed man
who's stopped to bow to the Bella Madonna,
to offer a shiny penny to la bambina
so she can buy something sweet
as her Mamma surely is
at Salerno's soda fountain.
Iodine gives it one look
and immediately hands it back.
I'd just as soon have a nickel, she says,
which finally wakes her mother up
so she smiles and shakes her head
and this shows off the single beautiful dimple,
Iodine loves but sees too little of.
The man and her mother have to laugh
as Iodine jumps up and down
like a happy monkey between them.
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