Appears (in an edited form) in The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps

Charles Bukowski

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

©Linda Lee Bukowski - used with permission