The
Death of Mr. Peanut
by
Mark Williams
My
early memories include a sky-blue Packard
cruising
down Main Street past The Victory Theatre,
past
the gleam of drum sets and shine of black pianos
behind
spreading wings of glass at Harding & Miller Music.
Past
rows of chocolate mice at Hermann’s Candy.
Today,
my mother’s at the wheel. That’s me
beside
her, watching Main Street narrow to the river.
Suddenly
my mother’s pumping the brakes,
leaning
out the window toward a parked taxi.
“Mister!
I’m going to hit you!” Mother shouts.
“Sure,
lady. Go ahead,” the taxi driver says.
With
my mother’s arm across my chest,
I
learn a yellow cab will stop a sky-blue Packard.
Next,
I learn that Mr. Peanut, the peanut man
who
stands outside his shop to hand out nuts,
has
blue eyes inside the giant smile
that
cuts across his giant peanut head.
“You
OK, buddy?” Mr. Peanut asks—
his
head too large to fit inside my window.
For
me, the Tooth Fairy will soon be history,
followed
by the Easter Bunny and, most sadly, Santa Claus.
But
first to fall is Mr. Peanut, his detached
head
smiling in the corner of his shop. And there,
leaning
against the nut-filled counter,
a
man with peanut-colored pants smiles, too—
his
blue eyes moving up my mother’s legs
as
she calls my father on the phone for help.
From
Mark Williams: “I
live in Evansville, Indiana, home of Hermann's Candy, which vanished
along with Mr. Peanut. My poems have appeared in The Hudson Review,
The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, The American
Journal of Poetry, and the anthology,
New Poetry From the Midwest.
Finishing Line Press published my poem, 'Happiness,' as a chapbook in
2015.”