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Liana Holmberg
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Aunt Ida's Box

_ Aunt Ida’s box got a ticket for the L, rose petals
dropped to dust, and teeth. Cuban cigars, I can
still smell them. Mama curls her lip. “I always
said that woman was perverse. Shoulda had her
own to get ridda her things.”

•

A surgeon—still available—extracted her
ivory   She left him in St. Louis,
kept the teeth—the roots like legs
kicking high as Ziefgield girls--
She kept them dancing
in her box

•

Husband number four stoops toward the
others whispering like church, In her day-- 
Mama snorts. “How it really was, she caught
men like trains. Rode ‘em. Used ‘em up. Got
off at the next stop.”

Ida’s rose bush gray. 

Uterus donated to science. 

•

In her day, my god!
her twat was tight

Three story walk-up
The girls plugged in irons, curlers,
every Friday night the power blew
From the ice box
they took ceramic fuses
the size of buttermilk biscuits,
climbed ladders, laughing,
swapped hot ones out with oven mitts
The men
passed them, came

flickering toward
the bloom of Ida’s rooftop Pall Mall,
stained 4 a.m. lips, fingers

Don’t imagine I didn’t do it
Fuck like mad--

bear witness

•

Mama throws the box
in the Goodwill bag. “Ain’t nothing
here you can use.” 

Ida’s crowns press stars in my palm.

Mama,
In her day--


"Aunt Ida's Box"
© Liana Holmberg
First published in
The Helen Burns Poetry Anthology: New Voices
, edited by Mark Doty.