by MARK LILLEY

Between benders my brother wants to take
his ten-year-old girl to the daddy-daughter dance.

He wants to do this right—suit and tie for him,
new dress for her, a corsage of yellow carnations.

His plan is dinner downtown with white tablecloths
followed by a carriage ride through the city,

and then the two of them joining her friends
to do the Macarena and Electric Slide,

enough effort that she might forgive him
for what he did to her mother in the front yard.

If he can make this night special, she might choose
to remember the string quartet on Market Street,

stars freckled above the city skyline, how he danced
the entire night without one stumble.

Just as my brother chooses to remember
a summer afternoon at Riverfront Stadium,

our father sober and holding his scorecard steady,
Johnny Bench hitting a deep fly to center field,

sellout crowd rising in unison, our father joining
the roar as we watch it sail safely over the fence.

Ω

Mark Lilley was born and raised in Cynthiana, Kentucky. He earned his undergraduate degree from Morehead State University and his MFA in poetry from Butler University. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The Louisville Review, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Red Rock Review, Southern Indiana Review, and other journals. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Spiritual Literature Award. He currently lives in Fishers, Indiana.

Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf, and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is a lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry, and radio from the UK.