Darlene O’Dell
Ashes to Ashes
Her father not long dead, my mother begins to work at the 5 and Dime. She’s blonde and quite beautiful and will grow up to wear Audrey Hepburn hats, smoke Virginia Slims, and read Dorothy Parker, though she will hardly ever leave the mill town, the same mill where her parents had worked as children.
She enjoys her afternoons at the dime store. Years later, her eyes sparkle if you ask her about it, and you want to ask her about it because she immediately transports you into a world of shiny red things, a place where white sprinkles cover raindrop chocolates and mix with the saltiness of popcorn in bags that crinkle just right. Swirling tops, yoyos, and games of Jacks for the taking, dolls with eyes that open and close, clipper ships sailing boldly across numbered canvases, pocket magnifying glasses . . . well, the better to see it all with. There is much to love in the dime store—and not a speck of dust.
I’ll fly away
they sing at his funeral
a plastic white lily
with a price tag on the stem
blows in an unkind wind
About the Author
Darlene O’Dell, a resident of Asheville, NC, is the author of The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven (Church Publishing, 2024), Raised in the World of Everyday Poets (2022, Yavanika Press, 2022) Sites of Southern Memory (University Press of Virginia, 2003). Her poetry has appeared in Modern Haiku, Presence, Frogpond, Wales Haiku Journal, failed haiku, and Under the Basho, among others.
The essence of good writing about an obviously good subject. Thank you.
Thank you so much!
The dollar store can never compete with the five and dime with the plastic bins of cherry red lipstick and nail polish
Who wasn’t tempted to put in a hidden pocket.
The dollar store can never compete with the five and dime with the plastic bins of cherry red lipstick and nail polish
Who wasn’t tempted to put in a hidden pocket.
Hi. For me, it’s something about the smell of the five and dime.