you_turn_bright_red crOwl there's a redness in your face i see, that must be from anger, i think. i hug you because you are my mother's treasured niece. one of the daughters she never had. also because we once played contact games in the lush green grass when we were both too young to know what parts of us were sensual. i drink montepulciano d'abruzza. you drink cheap american beer. maybe that's it. you're sad for the loss of your mother and grandmother, but more so at how ordinary you are. what happened? i become the freak and you? you became the mother of a son whose imbilical cord strangled him on the way out of your womb. he grew to become mad. he threatened to kill your nieces and nephews. maybe the redness i see in your face on the afternoon of my mother's birthday celebration at rizzo's malabar inn, a ristorante in crabtree, pennsylvania, is guilt. your daughter, college educated and working as a pet therapist, is getting married to a college boy from maryland who rubs his bride to be's back as if he wants to wear it down to the bone, and then dust. she looks like you. this wedding is your salvation. you will die and live again in her happiness. still, you fight with her even as we eat cavatelli. politics. your bush. her kerry. and so, beth(anne and joe's baby lily) removes her pinocchio_for_president poster and gives it to you. you read it. it irritates you. you turn bright red. i don't know how you do it. how you go on in your particular groove. if my welcome embrace felt like it was sincere, then i was a good actor. the kind that deceives you into believing. because most of the time we are rehearsing anyway. 040923 what's it to you? who go blather from