(created from old prose piece)

Teenie drank Coca-Colas
all day long.
Through the Today Show
and Search for Tomorrow
and As the World Turns.
Standing in the kitchen
with the ironing board
set up in the doorway
so she could watch t.v.
A house full of kids
and a husband picky
about his clothes,
there was plenty of ironing.
A husband too proud
to let her take hand-me-downs
for the kids, though
everyone else in the family
did, people with lots
more money.
When the clothes dry out
she sprinkles them again
with the coke bottle sprinkler.

Teenie drinks coca cola
all day long,
her face begins to break
out in mean, blue bumps
which leave pock marks.
The relatives begin
to talk.
Teenie drinks Coca Cola
all day long, she just
can’t quit.
“Well, she always was
a depressed person.”

Teenie’s father begins
to see things that aren’t
there, from all his drinkin’
When teenie’s mother died
his new wife didn’t want
her, so Teenie went
to live with her grandparents,
and rarely saw the daughters
they later had.

Teenie learned not to ask for much, wore clothes
somebody gave her
several sizes too big
until she got fat enough
to fill them up.
She bruises easily
people say it’s all the Cokes
made her blood go bad.
She slides the metal creasers
out of the gray work pants,
being careful not to bang
them against her legs,
it makes her husband
mad to see the bruises.
And if his pants aren’t
ironed just right.

Teenie never knew where
or how to be or how to ask
for anything more than what
she got.
She never learned to iron
sitting down the way some
women do,
besides her ironing board
was not adjustable.
Nor was her husband,
nor the kids,
nor the stepmother,
nor any one else
in Teenie’s life.

Teenie drinks Coca Cola
all day long,
she could hear them
hiss,
she just can’t stop.