1959, LOS ANGELES

Jealous of her sister (my mother) my Aunt Ruth,

Perfumed and virgin, agreed to marry at 55

A drunk proposing by transcontinental telephone,

A widower twice over, her childhood beau.

I loved her, her many years of waiting,

Living in grandmother's house, reading the latest

Book-of-the-Month-Club selections nights, days

Typing policies for the Equitable Life Insurance

Company. Company for her, some nights I stayed

The night, nights of homemade fudge and chocolate

Creams from Fanny Farmer's.

O, tonight, my kids

Brought me a Millbrook Creme-Filled Chocolate Buddie,

My madeleine -- a gush of memories: Ruth

Taking me out to lunch on her lunch hour -- Devil's

Food cake and coffee; Ruth, beating a sauce pan

Full of Divinity; Ruth, amid the alien corn

Of Iowa, smelling like French flowers; Ruth,

Victorian like mother, offended by the shit

And fuck of her foul-mouthed, sawed off husband,

Gun collector and sponge who made off

With her Equitable Life Insurance funeral money,

For a binge, when she died of heart failure, in Los Angeles

And left her corpse for my mother to bury;

Ruth, becoming fudge in a grave.