Family

    By Grace Paley

     

    My father was brilliant embarrassed funny handsome

    my mother was plain serious principled kind

    my grandmother was intelligent lonesome for her

        other life her dead children silent

    my aunt was beautiful bitter angry loving

     

    I fell among these adjectives in earliest childhood

    and was nearly buried with opportunity

    some of them stuck to me others

    finding me American and smooth slipped away

     

     

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