7 Ronka
Don’t Gossip
Afterwards is too late to say, “I’m sorry.”
Hurtful words can’t be unsaid.
Nana’s first child was born before marriage.
She never gossips or badmouths others,
she’s a woman who keeps secrets.
Hunger
Two fingers of Courvoisier
and one persimmon,
that’s my dinner—
enough to satisfy hunger,
not enough to fill loneliness.
I Reconsider
I say to the Guatemalateco, I’m American.
A proud daughter of immigrant Finns,
I claim the home of the free and the brave,
my land of mountains, plains, two oceans.
He replies with a spit to the floor and grinds his sandal.
More Row
Raffi sings her favorite song.
Uh-oh. Row-row. Wrenna protests when Row Your Boat stops playing.
Her Papa understands one-year-old speech—
the same way he knows an “uh-oh” means, Spilled milk, fetch a rag,
he sets the song in a loop and Row-Row repeats.
Buck in a China Shop
A buck with a six-point rack
crashes through the library window.
Glass shatters, he bleeds
down the steps of a story circle
where he rests on his knees on picture books.
Falling
large yellow snowflakes
bounce in a gray cloud slide,
trees let go a jitter and jive
to the grass and weeds
waiting to wear them.
Remix
Shake rattle and mashup—
i replay a player piano roll backwards:
song lyrics are pepper and salt on potatoes,
music chimes in my ears as I recount
a remix of the day.
https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/poetry-from-ingrid-bruck-and-julene-weaver/
Date Published: April 4, 2022