Aunt Tacita

• Aunt Tacita

Aunt Tacita

Her family were very good
At un-naming things
From the accident
The clocks wound back to zero

Packing tape and folded clothes
Lightened shelves and interlopers
Sat awkwardly under the finger-printed plastic sheets
In all the photo albums

The day her name came back to me
On a downtown bus, Miranda Street,
Sun skipping 'cross the rooftops in the spring:
Aunt Tacita, Aunt Tacita
Aunt Tacita
I repeated after me


Aunt Tacita had an illness
That the grownups never named
Wing shadows of a lamp moth
And the tiny sounds they made

She told me once a story
Where giant lizards stared
At a growing shape in the clouds that would bury them
And leave us with their prayers

The day her name came back to me
On a downtown bus, Miranda Street,
Sun skipping 'cross the rooftops in the spring:
Aunt Tacita, Aunt Tacita
Aunt Tacita
I repeated after me

Aunt Tacita had a bag of change
Didn't chink like other coins
She used to trick those tall machines
That gave you candy and little toys

She had a small and strange guitar
And a voice like drifting leaves
And sang me once a far-off song
Seguir viviendo, mi pueblo, vivir

The day her name came back to me
On a downtown bus, Miranda Street,
Sun skipping 'cross the rooftops in the spring:
Aunt Tacita, Aunt Tacita
Aunt Tacita
I repeated after me

© Brendan Bonsack
July 2014

1. Levee
2. Thirteen
3. Aunt Tacita
4. Flannelette Princess
5. Newtown, Jackson and Main
6. Declaration
7. Call it Home
8. Age of Stone (part ii)
9. Something Borrowed, Something Found
10. No Edges

Once Was Water
Released July 2014