Memory — Take Two
by Miriam Weinstein
Aunt Essie is sure she and my uncle drove Sally and me
to the Beatles concert in Milwaukee, 1964.
Mom is sure she and Dad drove us; says we visited
my aunt, uncle, and cousins before the concert. Then,
Dad did the driving. Mom remembers watching
me get swallowed by the crowd, wondering
if I still had Sally’s hand. She’d insisted
we hold hands in the crowd. Bedlam.
That’s what is was. The Beatles in America.
Crowds swelling outside concert halls,
moving like a single body.
My cousin says:
Your parents didn’t even come to Milwaukee.
You and Sally rode the Badger bus from Madison.
I was so jealous I couldn’t go to the concert.
I still have the button you bought me.
Memory is funny though, she admits.
I wouldn’t bet on it. That winding road behind us
under constant reconstruction. That fierce need to believe
your memory is the right one.
Miriam Weinstein is enrolled in a two year apprenticeship program in poetry at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She has a poem published in the Chinook Book and another was selected for publication in the anthology Home: the Heart of All That Is by Holy Cow Press, Oct. 2013.