Melinda LePere

Detroit Christening
            For my mother
 
1937 - Alta, the awkward one, came up
in her brother-in-law's second hand Chevy
to big sister Nell's house, already tight
with five hard luck children. Back home,
 
she knew about pinched penny fashion
from furtive movie magazines - fancies
arrayed in the windows of Hudson's,
Himelhoch's, Kern's or Crowley's, real
 
lady shops of the wide Woodward canyon.
Reflected in the mirror across the Kresge
counter is her new-named self: Micky -
a girl in a tilted beret, a girl who might
 
be brave, meet a man, a girl who might
flirt, dance even. Her first coke lifts in toast,
just like the ad girl with the globed glass bottle,
but the taste is terrible. At the Fox,
 
that cathedral to decadence, she restores
her faith with a buffet of promise
from the silver screen. Clark Gable, Gone
with the Wind - soon, someone will
 
sweep her off. So she waits for love
behind the cafeteria line at MacKenzie Hall
beneath a smart serving cap. Between
Pall Mall coughs, evening prayers, her mother's eyes,
 
she smoke-dreams black-stemmed nylons.
There never was an Oz back in the Pennsylvania hills.
Here it rose on the river, beckoning -
a rippling dissembler.



Also from Melinda LePere:
Peche Island, Detroit River  / November 1^st, Between Shores

Contributor Bio

Melinda LePere, is published in the anthology At the Edge of Mirror Lake, The MacGuffin and Paterson Review. She holds an MFA from Vermont College. As a DPS elementary teacher she promoted poetry, puppets and Family Poetry Nights. Now retired, she is still at sea in Detroit.