Sesquicentennial Alice
A hundred and fifty years, and it’s hard
to believe I’m no longer a girl,
aged into bluebonnet dresses
and spooned-up hair-dos. I have become
a woman turned upside down
in behind-the-scene featurettes,
all Redbox demure, gazing
with Victorian reticence
into the CVS parking lot.
How I got here, I never know,
following this cat or that dormouse
through the gardens of chatterbox
bulbs, while the CGI rabbit
flicks open his watch and proclaims
his short-hand terror no differently
than he had before. And grown,
I still fit in a teacup, wash
through the keyhole on the same sea
of tears, given to white-masted ships
and a freshly colonized world.