Don Share

On the Demise of Twinkies and Wonder Bread

—after Traherne

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father’s palace

How did I get here?

                  How fat we are here.

When first I sat, thin, at a sixties table

                  O then did I see my queenly mom

Whose eternity instated my world,

                  In which I walked in Keds

And every kid I saw

                  I wanted to know.

The lawns in their magnificence,

                  The Ohio air of pewter;

How inhuman, workaday, violent, unfair!

                  Our neighbors had no sense,

And all the schoolteachers, so dull,

                  Did seem to reckon

On quashing one’s self-esteem!

                  Why did they name me Don?

A native of space age paranoia

                  and innocence of news; fluoride

helped my bones and teeth grow,

                  yet otherwise I had little to show

for all the affluence that greenly flowed

                  along our troubled Anderson Rd.

A man with black Burberry coat and hat

                  kept a roof overhead: that was that.

Harsh jagged treetops, and their leaves concealed

                  our father’s oppressions, my tears

in the fries, my brothers’ unglued tempers;

                  all hid till the Yiddish lady

called me “kid” and revealed how foreign

                  angels are, in this country’s eyes.

So the buckeyes grew wide and plump,

                  my dreams grew fadey.

The elementary school is torn down now,

                  bulldozed into its elements.

The boys and girls there now grown or dead,

                  alone or remarried, or whatever.

Bullied and sullied then, I’m happy to be

                  in another state nowadays.

I call it the Tang® Dynasty, when mom

                  nourished us on the likes

of Bacos, Lipton onion soup mix,

                  Hamburger Helper,

with Cool Whip from the tub for desert.

                  Ugh.  Riding our Huffy bikes

to Burger Chef was insufficient exercise,

                  but we did read books.

The goyim abused us mightily.  Schnooks!

The shadows in the water were mine,

                  and did not divide the splendor

of my eyes.  I consumed books with avarice.

                  Amazement was my bliss

and condiment.  Each page was a Virgil to me, or

                  at least a flat rung to Paradise.

Oh did their lovely dust jackets shine!

                  “Nerd, egghead, four-eyes...”

Though I couldn’t even tie my own shoes,

I thrived, found myself on storied shores.

Over time, I became one of those bookish bores.

Don Share's most recent books are Wishbone (Black Sparrow), a new edition of his translations of Miguel Hernandez (New York Review Books), and a translation of Dario Jaramillo Agudelo's Field Guide (Marick Press).