Happy St. Patrick's Day: Memories of the Ohio River

I spent the weekend in Florida with my Mom, Step-dad, and former exchange student Ole, but when the cousins visited for a barbecue, I was back on the Ohio River, floating on a pontoon boat, eating catfish and frog legs, and fishing with my brother. 

Cousin Bill and Judy were there, so I thought of Uncle Carl and Aunt Nellie. But cousin Mike and Sandy were also there, my Uncle Charles's son and his wife. Only Uncle Arnold and Aunt Audrea were unrepresented. Here are a couple of poems about the river:

Fish Kill

Uncle Arnold got fat

that summer

belly full

of potato candy

a sugar roll

bursting

with peanut butter

like pimples

Aunt Midge popped

on his back after work.

Red, white, and blue

puffing him up

painting his lungs

like fourth of July

beside the Ohio 

Uncle Arnold died 

at the bottom of an oil tank.

Aunt Midge

drew fingers through

curly yellow locks

knocking catfish off hooks

into bloody buckets

watching them

gasp and swell

under a rotting sun.

My Aunt Nellie

My Aunt Nellie ate a banana a day

every day after her husband, Carl, got his pacemaker.

The doctor noticed the red splotches on her face and arms

and took her blood pressure in spite of her protests.

My Aunt Nellie wore pastel polyester shorts

with elastic waist bands and sleeveless white shirts

with mock turtle neck collars

every day the summer I visited her.

She looked like a turtle herself

in her green rubber webbed thongs.

She could almost swim across the Ohio

and dive for her dinner on the way back.

My Aunt Nellie smoked Salem 100s out of the corner

of her pursed red lip-sticked mouth

until the end of that summer on the river.

Carl’s doctor warned her, gave her little

white explosive pills she forgot to take—

Carl spent too much time in the garden without a hat

and lost part of his nose. Aunt Nellie snapped half-runners

into a thick iron pot, tossed in wide slices of fatty bacon

turned the burner on low and walked downstairs

to the screened-in garage summer house.

She drove an off-white VW bug with a stick shift

to the market for corn and tomatoes.

My Aunt Nellie fished all afternoon on the dock

in her straw wide-brimmed hat.

I sat on the river bank porch swing with my brother

dreaming of capless blondes and redheads

wearing jeans so tight no corn bread and fried catfish

would fit between their seams.

I hugged my Aunt Nellie when I left her.

Aunt Nellie ate a banana a day every day until her husband, Carl,

entered the hospital one more time. The doctor didn’t notice her shortness of breath

and fading color. She drove home from her sister’s climbed the steep stairs to the living room door and searched her purse for the house key.

The neighbors say she staggered and fell on the stoop without a sound.

But when I eat my banana a day every day,

I hear an explosion

and smell half-runners flavored with bacon simmering on the stove.