Yellow Balloon Rising

The overflowed tub leaves a moon grimace on the far wall of the pantry,

a yellow balloon. It’s President Richard Nixon’s unsmiling crayon face
come back to rise toward the offending bather.

In heaven, Princess Di sponges herself and tries to forget the thousands
            without legs.

A hawk circles for the seven-year-old boy I was.

My backyard, swaying trees toss sap on my mother, perennial flower,

who stands at a kitchen sink four hundred miles south of here.

Trumpeting, an elephant who is my father,
a truck floating diesel over my lemonade, my summer.

Clouds like these have parted, many religious people have ascended.
Bushes have spoken, lightning has written words into stone.

Why should the book of my life go without ruby slippers?

Why should you not be carried away by flying monkeys?

—Edward Bartók-Barata

Edward Bartók-Barata’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in African American Review, Bomb, Crowd, Denver Quarterly, Fence, and Verse. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Originally published in the summer 2004 issue of Boston Review.