Notes About The Poem
image from poetess' personal scrapbook (still have this cookbook)
GREEN STAMP CHRISTMAS, 1961
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every Thursday, the smell of ink
and newsprint smudged my fingers
as I leafed through the Green Stamp catalog
feverish with want~
not Barbie’s dreamhouse, not a bike,
but Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls,
two hundred stamps, crisp as lettuce,
which I didn’t have.
All summer I worked in the neighborhood:
hung Mother’s laundry outside to dry;
ironed Mrs. Thacker’s shirts till my wrists ached;
fed the Schroeder’s smelly basset hound;
scrubbed Mrs. Struck’s bathtub till it shined;
and ran errands to the grocery store for Mrs. Coyne.
Payment came in emerald rectangles,
licked and pressed into rows~
a fragile ladder toward the dream
of being a girl in an apron, frosting a cake.
December gnawed at me.
The stamps in my cigar box sighed~
not enough, not quite enough.
Christmas Eve, I curled by the tree,
counting them again,
spread like sad confetti on my bedspread.
Then Dad, grease still under his nails,
tossed an envelope in my lap.
Got these when I filled up the truck at Texaco, he muttered.
Inside—a cataract of green stamps,
enough to fill my heart with Christmas joy.
The day after Christmas, I woke early~
Dad drove me through slush to the redemption center,
Green Stamp book clutched to my chest.
By noon, flour was blooming in my hair.
you may read the related memoir vignette at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/the_eskimo_igloo_cake_13654
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