It Was the Nineteen Fifties by John Grey

1950s Gloucester, MA Family
by Glenn from West Virginia, USA
[CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

No sin.
Crewcuts for the boys and the lawns.
Underwear hidden from plain sight.

Busy church.
Busy business.
Everyone younger
the image of everybody older.

Marriage for life.
Religion for that and more.

So Samuel Marsh
battered his wife to death
with a tire iron.

He never laid a hand
on anybody else’s wife.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.