George Bilgere’s poem, Big Bang, was published in NER 16.2 (1994):
We slept naked on a wide bed
under the sighing swamp cooler.
We strawberried in Michigan woods
with our fat nanny, and in spring
we gathered sand dollars on Daytona ,
passed smiling into Kodachrome.
On the path to the grammar school
she bumped along behind me, burdened
with my black, funeral trombone case,
my books and sack lunch. I pushed her
into thorn bushes, eyed her coldly
as she played jacks at recess
with colored girls. When wine
put our mother in her all-day coma
she made our dinner, and when
I felt like it I smacked her.
I walked at night in exile
far from that fatherless house
of sobbing women while she
did dishes at the steaming sink.