Miracles
The summer I was four
my father locked
his bedroom door
every day after breakfast,
puttered out in the late afternoon
to defrost dinner.
We sucked Dutch pretzels
all day, like bones.
My teenage sister taught me
the word “fuck”.
I’d sing it operatically,
while dusting.
The word tasted like alphabet soup.
I imagined the two of us
flinging his bedroom door open,
chanting “Fuck!”
Watching him look up
from the gloom
and really see us
as if we were miracles.
*
Meg Pokrass is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections of prose and prose poetry. Her work has been published in RATTLE, American Journal of Poetry, Plume, New England Review and Electric Literature. Meg is the Founding Editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series. She is an American writer currently living in the Scottish Highlands.
A wonderfully bizarre portrait of family disfunction. I’ve read many prose poems by Meg Pokrass, so I’m surprised to see how skillfully she handles lined poetry. Brava!
Lonely childhood, but saved by sisterly subversion. Love it!
🖤🤍🖤