Family Album
By Diane Thiel
I like old photographs of relatives
in black and white, their faces set like stone.
They knew this was serious business.
My favorite album is the one that's filled
with people none of us can even name.
I find the recent ones more difficult.
I wonder, now, if anyone remembers
how fiercely I refused even to stand
beside him for this picture — how I shrank
back from his hand and found the other side.
Forever now, for future family,
we will be framed like this, although no one
will wonder at the way we are arranged.
No one will ever wonder, since we'll be
forever smiling there — our mouths all teeth.
Copyright Credit: Reprinted from Echolocations, Story Line Press, 2000, by permission of the author. Copyright © 2000 by Diane Thiel, whose most recent book is Resistance Fantasies, Story Line Press, 2004.
Source: Echolocations (Story Line Press, 2000)