In my Detroit childhood, our family
went to the movies every Sunday
regular as roast chicken.  Some
Sundays we chose the Beverly on Grand
River where the shops were not yet
boarded up, or the Circle to the east.

My mother loved musicals: Betty
Grable, Bing Crosby – it was the road
not taken, for she was born with short
legs unlike her two older sisters
who danced for George White, for
Ziegfeld and in the movies.  My father

liked westerns and detectives, the same
as in the Saturday Evening Post
past the Norman Rockwell covers.
I drank milk from a Shirley Temple
blue glass.  When I was older, my girl
friends and I went to the disreputable

Annex for horror movies I wasn’t 
supposed to see: Frankenstein, the Mummy 
and Wolf Man.  We choked on our popcorn
and screamed while boys we liked
threw caramel corn from the balcony
onto our braids.  At twelve we climbed

the balcony to neck with them and share
wet salty kisses while Abbot and Costello
met the monsters no longer scary.
Only our bodies frightened us. 
After hours of Porky Pig and Goofy, 
beautiful huge faces embraced and smoked.