Fairy Tales

When you get them talking, you will hear

fantastical things, like how your mother’s

car-dealer boss forced her to sit on his lap,

or how your father spent two years of his life

breaking East German radio code. How

can you not have known this about them,

their lives before you that had nothing to do

with you, these bright Kandinsky spatters

of experience that jar against the placid washes

of their lives now, set in the gentle landscapes

you have peopled with them, the way you once

set plates around a miniature white tea table—

for Barbie, tarted-up to the nines, and GI Joe,

rakish beret tipped back, already three cups in.

(from Avatar Review, 2015)