Back When All Was Continuous Chuckles

Hudson Review, The, Autumn 2004 by Inez, Colette

after a line by Anselm Hollo

Doris and I were helpless on the Beeline Bus

laughing at what was it? "What did the moron

who killed his mother and father eat

at the orphan's picnic? "Crow?" Har-har.

The bus was grinding towards Hempstead,

past the cemetery whose stones Doris

and I found hilarious. Freaky ghouls and skeletons.

"What did the dead man say to the ghost?"

"I like the movie better than the book."

Even "I don't get it" was funny.

The war was on, rationing, sirens.

Silly billies, we poked each other's arms

with balled fists, held hands and howled

at crabby ladies in funny hats, dusty feathers,

fake fruit. Doris' mom wore this headgear

before she got the big C which no one said out loud.

In a shadowy room her skin seemed gray

as moon dust on Smith Street, as Doris' house

where we tiptoed down the hall.

Sometimes we heard moans from the back room

and I helped wring out cloths while Doris

brought water in a glass held to her mother's lips.

But soon we were flipping through joke books

and writhing on the floor, war news shut off

back when we pretended all was continuous chuckles,

and we rode the bus past Greenfield's rise

where stones, trumpeting angels,

would bear names we later came to recognize.