Inheritance by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

From all my old relatives – decked out in always
out-of-fashion clothes that stunk of mothballs –
without even a word, I imbibed:

the Great 1900 Storm, Model T's, Doughboys, Charlie Chaplin,
the Lindy, “The Jazz Singer,” the 1929 Crash, the Depression, WPA,
musicals, big bands, Pearl Harbor, Nazis, Iwo Jima, rationing coupons,
scrap metal drives, VE and VJ Days, the jitterbug, the Bomb,
an economy on high-octane fuel, the Cold War, Korea, Civil Rights
marches, TV, Uncle Miltie, the twist, the sadness of aging –

so many relatives dying so young, the stress of the daily grind
on their minds and bodies, and always the unspoken pressure
to, by God, fit in, to keep up appearances at all costs.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His collection of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) was published in the fall of 2020.