wasn’t those mommies who read story books in laps
and crooks of her *****. She shook those needle painted hooks
until said bled a velvet red and ran off alone to hide inside
the white ruffled canopy bed. She was cumbersome as the long mink

coat; she’d tote on a five-foot one frame of the mentally
insane. Little Dolly she’d call the tiny tot. Now sit and look pretty, don’t spoil your dress or I’ll beat you silly! Daddy had friends inside
his head that kept him entertained.  But when he got angry with them

there was hell to pay. And he took it out on the two with garish
words and hyperbole that could fill the vortex of dolly’s soul. Between the cries and begs mommy got exasperated and wiped the floor up
with dolly’s head like a mop. She must have got brain damaged when

she pitched her skull like a baseball through the glass window. It shattered into a hundred pieces. Boy, did she beat the bejesus out of Dolly!  She had welts the size of thick cigars and her behind was
on fire as a wood-burning stove and hung off her side like a overcooked

marshmallow.   Mommy dearest smoked those Parliaments one after the other. And between each puff of swirling grit she’d cuss out loudly and hurl her spit. Gawd, if only she’d choke on it! The orange bee-hive hair she wore looked like a hornet’s nest. Stung a thousand times young, and a thousand more since they rolled her corpse out the door.