& then she said

I dont know why but first thought that came to my mind was:"This is mother of Charles Bukowski."

That's interesting Marko.

Right about the time I did the charcoal sketch I'd pulled a copy, off my book shelves, of Wormwood Review (Issue 31 volume 8 number 3, pub. 1968) that included, I believe, the first printing of Bukowski's The Underground, that I re-read.

Passing strange, let's carry the chairs back upstairs.

hehe,i like coincidences.

A Smile to Remember

we had the goldfish and they went around and around
in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes
across our front picture window and
my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to
appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry,"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can be
but my father beat her two or three times a week while
raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't
defeat what was attacking him.

my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish,
wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a
week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you smile?

and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and
hell and hell and hell, and nothing else

one day all the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the
eye on each top side still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Charles Bukowski

she was drinking freely
of a mountain spring
and as she sees me,
hides her shame
for her damp hair and splattered blouse
behind a blinding smile

Jim O'Neil
( Published in the same issue of Wormwood Review as Bukowski's The Underground.)