Climb the stairs. Take the call.
Stand by the old green chair.
Don’t sit down.
Hear your mother say
It’s cancer.

Don’t answer right away.
Clamp down your fear
before you speak.
Grip the green chair’s frame.
You only get one chance:
say the right things right.
Your hands and voice can’t shake.

Take the dress you wore that day.
Throw it out. Tell it
you don’t care
it is the color
of peach blossoms. Throw out the chair
and the photos of your mother, younger, your age,
slender in the blossom-colored dress she wore

before she passed it on to you.
Regret this even as you do it.

Do it. You must
throw out everything,
throw in anything to fill the pit in time
opened by your hesitation. Ask: What did you say
to ease your mother’s fear? What did you say
to ease her grief? What did you say? What
did you say?
The question will not go away because

the pause between her words
and your reply
is all you remember.

Rose Strode is a recipient of the “Undiscovered Voices” fellowship from The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her personal essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Little Patuxent Review, The Delmarva Review, and Viator; her poetry has appeared in Poet Lore. When she is not writing she wanders around in the woods looking for tracks. She enjoys gardening and fixing things that are broken. She is a finalist for the DC Poets Project publication prize.

Image by Ferdinand Hodler – scan from a book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11484986

Fear is in your bread

and you must choke it down.

To think of home—

the courtyard with its red filigreed rug,

the peel-paint walls, how the breeze with its tang

of the Khabur River touched your just-cut hair

as you curled up, writing in your diary—

starts the slide of grief, the thundering

that blocks out sound, pulls

a knife across each breath until

you drag your body like a sack,

walking with others

toward the border.

But something rises up,

wants to live:

               I won’t be that man sitting

            on his burned porch, face a lace of cuts,

           waiting in rain for death.

Shut away now the images of home,

like your diary with its leather straps.

Preserve your young life.

Eat your bread.

Naomi Thiers’ first book of poetry, Only The Raw Hands Are Heaven, won the Washington Writers Publishing House competition in 1992. Her other books are In Yolo County and She Was a Cathedral (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry, fiction, book reviews, articles, and interviews have been published in many journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Pacific Review, Potomac Review, Grist, Sojourners. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured in anthologies. She works as an editor with Educational Leadership and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Image by Mustafa.rafeeq – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48585655

He spoke seven languages and was never allowed to leave the country.

He’d gone to school in Paris, which made him an enemy of the people.

I’m sorry, but this is the only way I know to tell the story. He had

a family—a wife and daughter—but that is for someone else to tell.

He was a translator during the Cold War. When the big countries

wanted to talk, he would translate their languages.

He loved languages. He loved words. He wanted artistic license,

he wanted to say beautiful things in those beautiful tongues.

But there was nothing he could do, their conversations disintegrating,

and he never changed a word, not intentionally, for 32 years.

By then his daughter had left for school in a foreign country, to study

languages. His wife was working as a doctor in North Africa.

He had the dog, Lily, who ate with him at the table. He served her

on the good china, and she seemed to understand all seven languages.

Then one day, after Lily grew ill and died, it happened.

The diplomat said, “We will not stand for this! We have boats full

of heat-seeking missiles ready to destroy you.” He translated, unwavering,

“We will send boats full of flowers on your country’s birthday.”

The other party looked bewildered, “We can annihilate your half of the world.”

He said, “The mothers in your country are the most beautiful in the world.”

After a few murmurs the diplomats figured it out. It would take more

than language to fix their conversation. They decided he’d gone senile,

retired him at 62.  He wasn’t sad to go, but he had nothing

left to do—everything had worked up to that one moment.

Seven months later he died, before the end of the war and before

any end was in sight. I sometimes feel sad he couldn’t see the solution,

but it wasn’t about flowers or mothers anyway, and now a new war’s on,

one he couldn’t translate for. He only knew seven languages.

“The Story of My Father” originally appeared in Harpur Palate and also in Towline (Cloudbank Books 2016)

Holly Karapetkova’s poetry, prose, and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared recently in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, and many other places. Her second book, Towline, won the Vern Rutsala Poetry Contest and is available from Cloudbank Books. Find her online at karapetkova.com.

Image by Neva Micheva – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4414258

Ed. Note: Another in our series of poems by writers who participated in Arlington Writers Resist.

My anthem is the serenade of birds,

sung without regard for map lines

delineating human assumption of dominion

over that which cannot be possessed,

and I will not pledge allegiance to,

or defend a flag of illusory freedom.

As the sun greets each day,

I will bravely stand up—against

racism, gendered hate, and xenophobia.

I will join in solidarity

with those who block pipelines

and protest gun violence,

those who feed the hungry

and work to stop the school

to prison pipeline,

and with every person who works

for the common good.

Solemnly I swear not to tolerate

the revision of history to fit

a fraudulent justification for

perpetual war or

wanton destruction of Earth.

This is my oath of citizenship,

because to do anything else is treason.

(Published in Indolent Books Transition Poem series)

Lucinda Marshall is a writer, artist, and activist. Her recent poetry publications include Sediments, GFK, Indolent Books Transition Series, Stepping Stones Magazine, Columbia Journal, Poetica Magazine, and ISLE. Her poem, “The Lilies Were In Bloom” received an Honorable Mention in Waterline Writers’ “Artists as Visionaries Climate Crisis Solutions”.

Image By DaFoos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6423935; Author photo “Anonymous Quilted,” courtesy of the author.