Shawn Aveningo-Sanders

Still Life in a Small Missouri Town

You would think I could recite the story by heart.
How a teenage beauty queen meets her future husband

at Hunt’s Drive-in, when Gary offers Joyce a piece of gum.
Or something like that. Details blur in the brain fog of age.

Every Saturday meant a feast: Nanny’s pot roast
with a smorgasbord of southern-style sides—sweet potato pie,

green beans fricasseed, golden corn, and buttermilk biscuits.
On Sundays, we ate leftovers. Unless, for a special treat, Dad

and Popo picked up burgers & hot crinkle fries from Hunt’s,
with a vanilla shake for my sister and chocolate for me.

We’d crowd around the kitchen table, where someone
would retell the old tales. I didn’t always pay attention,

too busy nabbing fries off my sister’s paper plate
while we laughed, watching Carol Burnett

saunter down a staircase, in her velvet drape dress
and curtain-rod epaulets, á la Scarlett O’Hara.

ketchup packets
scattered like memories
salt streaks my hair

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About the Author

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’s poems have appeared in ONE ART, Calyx, Quartet, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Amsterdam Review, among other journals. She is the author of What She Was Wearing and the forthcoming Pockets (MoonPath Press), a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest.  A mother of three and Nana to one, she shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.

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