Tag: Kate Harding poet

Meeting Place

By Penny Perry

Author’s note: In August, 2008, Russian tanks and soldiers moved into the Republic of Georgia and killed 228 civilians. In March, 2014 under Putin, Russia seized Crimea. President Obama ordered sanctions against the Russians. Now, President Trump wants to remove the sanctions, and Putin wants to recapture the former territories of the Soviet Union. Trump’s admiration of Russia and his possible  collusion with Russian goals gives robust support to Russian aggression.

The Republic of Georgia, 2008 …

Chain link fence, a field,
a narrow, wood bench,
shade from an untrimmed tree.
Sparrows still twittering
this August morning.

Maybe they are grandmothers,
wide white arms
in summer house dresses,
open-toed shoes.

The one on the bench in black,
a babushka on her head.

The other, a red print dress
with English letters.
Maybe, only a moment before
she stood, small purse in hand,
gray curls and dress flapping
in the slight breeze.

Maybe the woman in black smiled,
a story on her lips.

Now, wild ivy in her hair.
The red dress hiked above the knees,
white turnip legs stretched out,
purse near curved fingers.
Blood on her nose and forehead.
Eyes open, as if surprised
by the icy crackle of gunfire.

Her friend sits crying.
Two fresh loaves of bread
on the bench beside her.

 

Penny Perry is a five time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first poetry collection, Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage, was published in 2012 by Garden Oak Press. Her new collection, Father Seahorse, will be published by Garden Oak Press in 2017.

Russian invasion force photo credit: Yana Amelina (Амелина Я. А.), via a Creative Commons license.

Floating

By Penny Perry

 

Mother couldn’t have known what to do.
She was only twenty-five,
drove her big sister, Leona, six weeks pregnant,
to the doctor’s in LA.

Leona squinted at California bungalows,
backyards with orange trees.
She thought about her husband home worrying,
her baby daughter waiting for her.

She told my mother about her screenplay,
a murder in the Braille room of the public library.
Then, she sat silent, her long fingers tangled like kelp.

The doctor glanced at his medical license
framed on the wall behind him,

said he was afraid to use ether.
Leona jutted her famous Heyert jaw:
“My friend Ruth told me to insist.
With ether I’ll float above the pain.”

It was hot that June morning, 1941.
No air conditioning. My mother
in the waiting room thumbed through magazines.
Big-eyed Loretta Young on the cover of Life.

It happened fast. Ether, a busy housewife,
pulled down the shades.

The doctor waved my mother in.
White face, head back, Leona was no longer breathing.
The ribbon in her dark hair floated in the breeze of a fan.

………………………………………………………

Penny Perry is a five time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first poetry collection, Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage, was published in 2012 by Garden Oak Press. Her new collection, Father Seahorse, will be published by Garden Oak Press in 2017.

Reading recommendation: Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage by Penny Perry.