Kitchen Talk by Claudia Gary

Kitchen Talk

Both born in war’s shadow,
you and I received
different messages.

For me the shade was smaller,
the truth distant. But you
lived among its traces.

Your mother said, “Waste nothing.”
“The last bite,” said your father,
“will always be the best.”

“Finish up your dinner,”
my grandma would say. “Children
are starving now in Europe.”

When I tell you I’m leaving,
you take my vegetables
and place them in your fridge.

We must have a famine
in order to talk.

*

Claudia Gary lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science writer, visual artist, composer of tonal songs and chamber music, and an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music is online at https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html. See also pw.org/content/claudia_gary