January 2024
Bio Note: I am a retired journalist who writes poetry in Arizona. I was honored to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Poetry Breakfast for my poem, "Care Loving." My new book, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, will be released this month. I am editor of Storyteller Poetry Review which will celebrate its first anniversary in March.
Tanya Tucker Wannabe
You stand barefoot on the stage in faded jeans and curly red hair strumming the guitar Grandpa bought you as you growl: Delta Dawn what’s that flower you got on at thirteen the same age as Tanya when she hit Number 1. Applause says star power. Thirteen years later do you ever pick up the guitar and strum and sing as you cuddle your cowboy, children and canines in the suburbs?
Heir to the Throne
Just as my father is getting ready to check out of Hotel Earth, my nephew swims through my sister’s birth canal and when the two sets of piercing black eyes and bald heads meet they smile as if gazing into a mirror. When my father takes a bow and exits the stage, his grandson takes up his passion for cooking and reading and writing. I see my father’s smiling eyes and hear his laughter as I watch my nephew receive his diploma in English and recite the works of Steinbeck, Hemingway and Poe to a classroom full of students who find him humorous and brilliant and writing short stories in his office while his wife and children sleep just like his grandfather, my father. And now on my nephew’s 39th birthday I watch my father ‘s tall slim body bend over the backyard grill as his grandson flips sirloin steaks in the sunlight and serves them on paper plates with the grace of his grandfather who is somewhere grilling steaks and teaching grammar content his grandson is carrying on in the kingdom he built for him.
What’s Wrong With this Picture?
They look like the Waltons and the Cleavers. All smiles and sweetness in Facebook photos. The mother in white gown. Father in tuxedo. The Elvis impersonator officiating as they renew their vows on their 25th wedding anniversary. The bridesmaids, ten daughters in long purple polka dot dresses - and the groomsmen, two tall sons in black tie attire. There are clues no one notices in the many photos of perfection as the family grows over the years but the children don’t. The children paraded like prancing ponies in jeans and red sweatshirts labeling them Thing No. 1 to Thing No. 13. Stiff smiles. The real picture zooms into focus when cameras capture handcuffs on parents and ambulances rushing their offspring to the hospital. Other photos follow. Ribs and bones protruding from stunted bodies. Bruises from beatings, strangling and being shackled to beds. A feast laid out on the counters – casseroles, cakes, croissants - for the children to smell and see but are forbidden to eat. No one is smiling in these photos.
©2024 Sharon Waller Knutson
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL