A Backflip of Language

Daughter number two,
toddling at twenty-three
months; strawberry-blond ringlets,
a remake of Shirley Temple.
Cornflower-blue eyes and lucid
skin — a still drying portrait
turning heads of strangers
in the vegetable aisle.

Visiting her Uncle Harald
her ears flip a summersault. His
name somehow transforms
into Uncle Horrible. Maybe
he shouldn’t have done his mad-dog
growl, used for frat-boy initiations
and joke-scaring his own small sons.

Decades later he fondly
remains “Uncle Horrible,”
a nickname sticky as bubble gum
on a Macon sidewalk in July —
a spot, but not a stain.

Gary D. Grossman
MacQueen’s Quinterly #24