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Aunt Alicia and the Facts of the Case
by Fred Chappell
She loves to gossip, Aunt Alicia does;
The problem is, her memory's all fuzz,
And so she can't attach the proper name
To the proper personage and must defame
At random, the way a dandelion throws
Its seeds to sail the wind wherever it blows.
Did Cousin Danny rob a jewelry store
Or did he lately move to Labrador?
Was Cousin Doris married in Detroit
Or was she mangled by an ocelot?
It's quite a jolt sometimes. You hear it said
Three members of your family are dead
And think, We dwindle to a precious few—
Then see them Sunday sitting in their pew.
Scandal she stores in opulent supply:
At every word two reputations die;
A third escapes, but that's the very one
She should have pinned her naughty story on.
Her sources place her accuracy past doubt,
She claims. Why are you startled to find out
Your younger sister's run off with an Eskimo?
It must be true, she says—you told her so.
Yet you forgive her bumbling because she
Confers a fickle immortality:
For a while you're dead, and then you rise,
Resurrected by her memories
that flicker dim then brighten up again
The way an April day shifts sun and rain . . .
Once she declared, with dark eyes sad and round,
That she herself was dead and underground.
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