Dinner Parties, Suburbia
In this town, no one overdoses or commits suicide,
they just sort of disappear. At some point, they stop
showing up at yard sales and cookouts, and pretty
soon after, people stop asking after them or their job
or their mother. Eventually, as you’re splashing water
on your face in a dinner party’s wallpapered bathroom,
you’ll realize two things at once: they’re gone, and
you’re the last in town to find out. You’ll wonder who
discovered the body on the tile, dead or maybe dying.
Once clean, or at least less greasy, you’ll walk into
the living room, studying the faces contorted in small talk,
searching for any sign that it could have been one of them.
A twitching eyelid or sweating palms. You will find no
clues, only poorly covered wrinkles and unplucked eyebrows.
In their Friday evening best, each holding a glass of wine
about as full as yours, no one seems personally touched
by death, as if they understand it beyond abstraction.
You’ll try so hard to figure out how they are so comfortable
pretending everything’s all right that when someone asks
how you’re doing, it’ll take a moment for you to decide.
Nancy, Baltimore, 1960
There must have been some change,
something only a woman could smell
because Mama studied me like she knew
I was the slut I’d just become. Or maybe
my lipstick was smudged or I’d forgotten
to button my blouse. She was standing
there on the porch, nightgown on, curlers
in her hair, empty martini glass in hand.
She told me it was late, that she’d had
to take a second and third drink to keep
her nerves down. She told me she was
wary of any young man who kept a nice
girl like me out in the dark. And what might
the neighbors think? I told her he was
a gentleman, even if that wasn’t true;
he was just the first man who had asked
to slip his hand up my skirt. Once we
were inside, Mama said I ought to know
a gentleman is no better than a boy
at keeping his hands to himself when
tempted, and then she went to bed.
E.C. Gannon's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Assignment Magazine, The Meadow, Molecule, Olit, and elsewhere. A New England native, she holds a degree in creative writing and political science from Florida State University.