Aunt Sad

She lines up the hot wheels good.
But when one backslides she says rat bastard.
She makes Crazy Monkey talk
and laughs when he talks to her.
At the loud party, Aunt Sad is on the outside.
Smoke leaves her nose like a dragon.
She puts her finger in front of her lips.
I sit and she points out the stars.
She doesn’t know the name of that one.
But those two are Great and Little.









Merridawn Duckler is a poet, playwright. Runner-up: residency Arizona Poetry Center, judge Farid Matuk. Finalist: Center for Book Arts, Tupelo Press, Sozoplo Fiction Fellowship, Oregon Play Prize. Fellowships/awards: Writers@Work, NEA, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, SLS St. Petersburg, Russia, Southampton Poetry Conference. Editor at Narrative and international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.

You can see another poem in 5.1