| Freckle The hands first. (It's always the hands first.) Dancing on the low table; main room in your house of food. The stretch of skin like silk decaying. Its edges ache as they turn inside. (Your plump potato palms like well-cooked latkes...) I dip paper in milk coffee; inhale as it meets my lighter, hisses; grows the pseud of years captured; Illy; an anointment of ashes. The kitchen cupboards, dizzy with drunk gumballs are rattling like traintracks. Plates of ham sweat, waiting. Frying bread sizzles; whispers; the Danube in September; dozing out stories to half-open ears. Your palms are underground, dancing; giddy with soil, and the scent of lifetimes. Footsteps echo off the high ceiling. Warsaw: (more potatoes?) The thud of boots stampeding. Nimble fingers draw dark-haired faces from dust beams. They're all yellow now. And then: you are sixteen; The splashes of lifetime tumble; the hiss of fried air. (I always imagined your freckles must magnify as each year mounted; size a tribute to each season's swelling. That eventually you'd become a swaddled potato; a single plump latke; Stippled in sunbeams as you are painted in air.) Roberta Lawson |
If you have any comments on this poem, Roberta Lawson would
be
pleased to hear them.
