Alice’s Childhood
But there was the winter carnival
Rose thought was in honor of her
turning six, and none of them told her
any differently. Giant tiered floats like
white-frosted cakes, gauzy pink butterflies
teetering on stilts, and a ten-foot tree
raining lights down its sides. Rose stared
at the strong chestnut Clydesdales clopping
down Main Street, and the North Forsyth
Raiders in their red and black marching
uniforms, feathers in their caps trembling
with each step. When the nativity rolled past,
the crowd surged forward to see the plastic
savior. And Owen shoved his way to the edge
of the human path and grabbed a chocolate
Santa Claus, handed it to Rose without a word.
And Alice’s mother folded a crane out of
a receipt from her purse and tucked it into
Rose’s hair. And Alice held Rose up to see
above the crowd and said, Look at all of this—
All of this for you.
—
This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!
Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.
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