Monday, July 31, 2006

Fennel with Red Ants, Joan Z. Rough © 2006


For those of you who read and liked my poem for last week's Poetry Thursday, here's the other side of the story.

Summer Vacation With Grandparents

At breakfast Dziadzio breaks
raw eggs into steaming coffee
swallows slowly
I gag imagine yolk and slimy
white sliding down my throat
Babcia peels and chops
chanting eat, eat
we sit and stare at bowls
brimming with overripe
bananas soggy corn flakes
in broken English she speaks
of the wolf that lives in the pump house
he feasts of children
who do not clean their plates

No friends comic books or bicycles
we spend endless days
out of doors gathering eggs
feeding chickens stealing grapes
from the arbor we crayon
in stacks of coloring books
they keep just for us

I count the days wishing
for home cry myself to sleep
in the bedroom under the eaves
where on the wall Christ
carries his cross through throngs
of jeering people I dream
of snarling wolves roosters pecking
my legs chickens running headless
through blood stained grass

My brothers cling to me
as if I am their mother

jzr

3 comments:

Becca said...

Life on the farm is not idyllic, is it? You've painted a superb picture of the flip side to visiting grandma!

Deirdre said...

This made me think of my grandmothers and their old world ways. I like that you've shown both sides of a visit, the way most of life truly is, not all one way or the other.

Visual-Voice said...

I love it. My grandmother put egg in the coffee pot too.