Memorial Day, 1955 by Jeffrey Owen Pearson That picture of you in our 1953 Pontiac parked outside the Chicago brownstones It was after the cemetery on Decoration Day After Aunt Florene’s cigarettes After Uncle Tony’s Stag beer You in your ribbed t-shirt flexing your muscles Sent you outside by Mom’s scowl— or maybe the heat— where you listened to the 500 on the radio with the car doors open Someone’s racecar went over the back wall You went over the fence Mom swore you’d be back by dark Tony brought wine and Italian bread from the basement refrigerator— we called it Hunka-Bunka bread— As you waltzed in and spun Mom to “Fly Me to the Moon” The moon itself leaning like Sinatra at the end of a long, long alley above all the red and the white and the blue Bio: Jeffrey Owen Pearson’s poems appear in So It Goes, Reckless Writing Anthology, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island and Maize. His chapbook Hawaii Slides was published by Pudding House Publicatio
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.