Sonnet: Why I Hate Chocolate Milk
by John Kendall Hawkins
She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.- Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child
who looks at the milkman with sad wonder --
the milkman who always rang twice, styled
locks, chocolate milk bribe, blue eyes all wild,
and would go, Is your mother home alone?
a foot that wouldn't let me close the door
and a smile that didn't exactly reassure.
I go, Yes, she is, but she's on the phone.
The interloper's foot withdraws, my heart
gallops through my mind, horsey Paul Revere
announcing that a change of guard is here.
Dad was on the phone from the liquor mart.
Next thing I know I'm in a foster home,
there's a knock at the door, and a new poem.
(Article changed on Sep 22, 2021 at 10:58 AM EDT)
