Perhaps the Cinderella bounce house
\nin the postage stamp back yard of this
\nundocumented family represents it all:
\nthe grass is all but gone, and even goats
\nheads \u2013 sharp enough to puncture bike
\ntires \u2013 are far between, and Cinderella
\ncurtsies on the vinyl walls, extending
\none white hand out to nothing, and she\u2019s
\nblonde and beautiful, and all the children
\nin the bounce house are brown, and I\u2019m
\nthe only person whose first language
\nisn\u2019t Mexican, or Dominican, or some other
\nlanguage not American. And the children
\nbounce higher, springing each other up
\nas they land, and they sometimes fall
\ninto piles and giggle, and the adults watch
\nthe kids, and the street and drink beer
\nwhile eating ballpark-style nachos
\nand loaded hot dogs, and the little girl
\nwhose birthday it is can\u2019t wait to bust
\nthe pi\u00f1ata, and she changes the music
\nfrom mariachi to the YMCA, then climbs
\nback in the bounce house, and dances
\nalong, her Cs backward, and when too
\nmany kids crowd into the same corner,
\nthe bounce house collapses toward them,
\nand not a single one screams, not even
\nthe toddler. Maybe they\u2019re used to silence,
\nto bedrooms crowded with parents
\nand siblings, and sometimes even
\ngrandparents, and this pile of bodies
\nis something of a comfort. Cinderella,
\nwho turned back into a choregirl at midnight.
\nCinderella, who believed in dreams.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the Cinderella bounce house in the postage stamp back yard of this undocumented family represents it all: the grass is all but gone, and even goats heads \u2013 sharp enough to puncture bike tires \u2013 are far between, and Cinderella curtsies on the vinyl walls, extending one white hand out to nothing, and she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6Jypy-birthday","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10404,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10398\/revisions\/10404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}