First her dogs,
then her mind,
pushy children ruin all the fun,

she lived as she dyed:
unknown,
unfounded,
no certificate,

out in the hills, her sunlit room
was her paper moon, angry
foreboding men darkening
her door,

in the 1920s, they said,
though it was wrong, it
was always wrong,
when they named her June,
she believed it her birth
month;

one evening in the holler,
a man came through
pushing a cart with beets,
to sell
no one stopped him,

she remembered, she said,
a smell like earth, dirty
and depressing, musty
like root cellars, and
her father lifted his
hand;

smoke swirling around
her finger was pleasure,
so was soda and peanuts,
simple, she was, and
callow, math on paper,
long division, no
money,

then it got dark, no more
Christmas, nor husband,
nor love; shattered kids
beating their chests,
and mangey dogs ratting
around the flea…