The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Jennifer Pruden Colligan

NOTICE
 
At four, one daughter was twins
with her best friend. They stood in the
school hallway in matching sweatshirts
with three woolly sheep marching
across their bony chests. Four wrists
poked out of red sleeves—two
dark and two pale.
 
At four, another daughter says,
wouldn't it be funny if a family
had a black dad and a white mom.
That would be weird, she says,
in the restaurant where all the families
have segregated themselves.
 
I say, my hair is brown and yours
is blond. Is that weird?
That’s different, she claims.
You have more skin
than hair.

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