After the Memorial
From files of past lives, the smell
of mouse-urined letters, I hear again
the lassos of ornery laughs looping
the living room circle, the dusty rug,
the dusty antlered head pegged
into the wall. An attendance
of old vanities, thrashings of old ales
and laws. I feel again the tension
in the stones of the dry irrigation ditch,
the crunch of alabaster gravel, recall
how I swallowed the knots, hiked
the switches along a delicate divide
between cliff ridge and gravity.
Memil
Let’s climb back on the Metro bus
in front of your house
on Bloomington Avenue South,
ride downtown,
buy me another
white paper sack of lemon drops
from Dayton’s candy counter,
come back for pepperkakor
in your kitchen, and show me now,
since I didn’t ask you then,
how you roll the ginger dough
so thin,
spread butter on lefse
with your white hands,
bake your raisin cake, yulekake,
Swedish sausage.
And while uncles watch a Twins game
on Saturday afternoon,
their cigar smoke rings wavering
across your twilit living room,
teach me again at your baby grand
about the tonic and dominant,
MacDowell’s “To a Wild Rose”,
Mozart’s childhood.
Let’s plant more peonies
behind your kitchen door
near Oscar’s garden,
the pink ones perfuming the air.
And feed me another spoonful of honey
along the white staircase
where rain-watered violets
reflect your face.
Karen Jones is a teacher, poet, and life-long learner from Corvallis, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a number of publications, most recently in Windfall, Cirque, and The Poeming Pigeon’s “Pop Culture”. Her chapbook, Seasons of Earth and Sky (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2020.
