Seems to need a little more for 'Wynne' to be a real winner, Max. Surely you can remember the make of small car or just make it up. Then 'her midlife accomplishment' which I like, could perhaps be circumscribed with dashes to draw attention to the phrase, rather than commas. The break between lines 4 and 5 is a fair hurdle for this reader, perhaps needing a comma or some other way of introducing Wynne, who gets a little buried (notwithstanding, I realise, you are seeking a gradual reveal). 'Pubertal' is a new coinage to me and maybe OK but draws attention away from the breasts about which we learn nothing but their height above ground. I'm being picky here but I think you could bring Wynne to life if we got more of a sense of what she occasioned in teenage you rather than in the dispassionate observer who skate-chronicles the rest of her life after acknowledging her postural pluses.
Bill
> On 8 Jan 2015, at 2:45 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Wynne
>
> In the small car my aunt drove,
> her midlife accomplishment,
> there would come to our house
> with her withered friend
>
> Mrs Wright (painful to behold
> with her fox-fur over shoulders
> lopsided, her twisted stick),
> Mrs Wright’s daughter,
>
> a woman like a rare
> draped statue, the outline
> of her breasts level
> with my pubertal eye.
>
> Wynne. She had little to say,
> nothing memorable,
> in a subdued voice;
> smiled - never laughed.
>
> Why did people defer to her,
> praise her auburn hair? -
> yes, it was - unusual.
> Hair soon fades from gold to dull.
>
> (I was once little Snowy -
> now I was lanky Mouse,
> a boy invisible to her
> in this quiet house).
>
> The middle-aged were on her case.
> Poor Wynne - if she doesn’t
> marry soon…! she’s no life -
> the shoe shop; poor Mrs R. -
>
> sinking to a whisper -
> adopted her, you know! -
> insurance against neglect
> in her old age. She sat well,
>
> she stood well on heels
> higher than the others’; dressed
> better than the middle-aged ladies.
> Aunt drove them home -
>
> somewhere pokey where
> visitors weren’t invited.
> Miss Wright never met her
> Mr Right. Those breasts
>
> found no takers. At length alone,
> mightn’t Wynne, single woman,
> have felt in her breast a pang?
> looked into adoption?
>
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