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Column 381

Snapshot

Intro by Ted Kooser
07.08.2012

I’d guess that many of you have looked at old snap­shots tak­en of you by dot­ing rel­a­tives and tried to recall what it was like to be that per­son in the pic­ture who seems to be you yet is such a stranger today. Here Lin­da Par­sons Mar­i­on, who lives in Knoxville, Ten­nessee, touch­es upon the great dis­tance between then and now.

Snapshot

My mother sends the baby pictures she promised—
egg hunting in Shelby Park, wooden blocks
and Thumbelina tossed on the rug, knotty pine
walls in a house lost to memory. I separate out
the early ones, studying my navel or crumbs
on the tray, taken before my awareness
of Sylvania Superflash. Here I am sitting
on the dinette table, the near birthday cake
striking me dumb. Two places of wedding china,
two glasses of milk, posed for the marvelous
moment: the child squishes the fluted rosettes,
mother claps her hands, father snaps the picture
in the face of time. When the sticky sweet
is washed off the page, we are pasted in an album
of blessed amnesia. The father leaves the pine house
and sees the child on weekends, the mother
stores the china on the top shelf until it’s dull and crazed,
the saucer-eyed girl grips her curved spoon
like there’s no tomorrow.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Linda Parsons Marion, from her most recent book of poetry, Bound, Wind Publications, 2011. Reprinted by permission of Linda Parsons Marion and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.