;
And I Remember He’s My Father
I’m Mormon, and as such, long
to scrub babies in sinks,
deliver vegetable casseroles to wakes,
find a husband willing to unclog drains.
I long fiercely.
Partly because we can’t have sex
until it’s time to make
pink-cheeked children.
And I’m getting older.
I dream my mother offers my father
as marriage material. He’s done nicely for her
for thirty-four years, she thinks he’d do nicely for me.
And it’s the event I’ve been mapping-
all skirts, rosebuds, and tall polka-dotted cakes.
But quick, with just a slight nagging that it won’t do;
slight until the wedding night.
When we’re on either side of a bed, changing.
Deja Earley’s poems, fiction, and essays have previously appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Utne Reader. She has received honors in several writing contests, including the 2008 Joan Johnson Award in poetry,and the 2004-2005 Parley A. and Ruth J. Christensen Award. She was awarded first place in the 2011 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest, and she had several poems included in Fire in the Pasture. She completed a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and she now lives in Tucson, Arizona.