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"Two for the Montrose Drive-In"

Click here to listen to Rita Dove read this poem.

1. Tupperware

Three days before it was pick-up-and-scrub,
the tops of doorjambs wiped clean
for white gloves come to test disarray.

Dad packed up the kids and fled
the cheddar cubes, plastic forks suspended
in Jell-O—that was judgment, ambrosia and trident—

oh, but it was delicious
at the Drive-in, sliding in pajamas down
into the pit, waking

just in time to see
great Pharaoh drowned
and Charlton Heston rosy

in his holy rags ... now, that
was a good story, that
kept us awake

until the end credits, the moon
huge as it wandered down
the black gullet of avenue,

bright eye swallowing
the windshield. ... We made it
home to the ruins

of the feast: crustless sandwiches
smelling faintly of ocean, platoons
of celery, mints and dip (they always

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Former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove received the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Her latest book publications are Sonata Mulattica and The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry.

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