Lilace Mellin Guignard: Lullaby in Fracktown

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.
You know that Mama loves you lollipops
and Daddy still has a job to lose.

So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos
loud and louder from the mountaintop.
Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes

and dance the polka with pink kangaroos,
dolphin choirs singing “flip-flop, flip-flop.”
Hey, Daddy still has a job to lose —

don’t be afraid. Close your eyes, snooze,
because today our suns have flared and dropped.
Tomorrow when you wake, put on your blue shoes.

Eat a good breakfast. Be good in school.
Good boys go to college goody gumdrops
so someday too you’ll have a job to lose.

Waste trucks clatter by as the gray bird coos.
Flames pour forth when the faucet’s unstopped.
Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.
For now, Daddy still has a job to lose.

—

Copyright 2016 Lilace Mellin Guignard. First published in the January 2016 issue of Poetry. Republished by permission of the author.