ON VACATION

by Barry Peters

Bronze plaques. Granite monuments.
Another scenic overlook.

She prefers the car,
a library book, and Kent cigarettes

while her husband reads the fine print
of the Civil War

and her sons spit into the valley
of a Blue Ridge vista.

Had they turned around
in that mindless August sunshine,

put quarters in the tourist binoculars
and spun the dials into focus,

they would have seen
what should have been memorialized

--snapshot for a photo album,
slide for a carousel projector--

the American mother
inhaling tobacco,

turning the page
on ten minutes’ respite

from those oppressive obelisks,
those silver aliens.

Barry Peters lives in Durham, NC. Publications include Barrow Street, Grist, Image, RHINO, and The Southern Review.