a sombrero, cowboy boots, and button-up jeans like a boy;
a coloring book history of the United States, a burro (not a donkey),
a mother-of-pearl accordion; the ceremonial Indian headdress, the bamboo spear with the big rubber tip, the ochre dress with stripes going the wrong way; my father to stop drinking, my sister to protect me, my brother to disappear;
a hickory deluxe burger & chocolate chip shake at Petersen’s Drive-In, spare ribs & potato salad from Puppo’s Delicatessen on my birthday.

I always wanted a canary:
the best grades in the class, white buck saddle shoes, Kennedy for President;
to be a tennis champion, save my mother from my brother, be the Governor
of California, head of Time Inc; to not be fat, to be better at math, escape
to boarding school, ride my bike casually, tan easily & live on the beach at Malibu;
in a penthouse at the Beverly Hilton, in the Monsanto House of Tomorrow at Disneyland, at The Plaza like Eloise; to drink Tiki punch at Trader Vic’s, eat sweet butter
on date-nut bread at Bullock’s Wilshire, Cobb salad at The Brown Derby.

I always wanted a canary in a round silver cage:
to fly first class, wear a tie & waistcoat, make money
but not care, be famous, but not too, be the woman (and man) of my dreams; be born at the end of the nineteenth century, live in the demi-monde of Paris, The New York School in the fifties, La Nouvelle Vague in the sixties;
to love someone as much as my mother, be like the lilies of the field,
a pilgrim at The Ganges; to walk the sleepless streets of Greenwich Village,
the groomed pathways of the Champs de Mars, the icy avenues of Reykjavik; live in isolation, die sooner rather than later, erase myself.
I always wanted a canary in a round silver cage, singing.

—

copyright 2015 Celeste Gainey

from The Gaffer, a collection of poems by Celeste Gainey, published by Arktoi