Back in September, at the Library of Congress annual book festival on the Smithsonian Mall, I picked up a copy of Verse Wisconsin, a wonderful regional poetry mag, founded by Linda Aschbrenner, in 1998, formerly called Free Verse...Although published from Madison, Wisconsin, Verse Wisconsin is universal... like the New Yorker...
Loved the mag, which got my own poetry-writing juices flowing again... thought that John's poetry would be perfect for the mag... I didn't tell John...that...I submitted some of the poems that he had sent me...some you're read on the blog, and others to Verse Wisconsin.... John's Midwestern roots, and love for northern Wisconsin summers fit the mag.... I told John a few days ago, that one of his poems was accepted for the upcoming mag. (He took the news well. Further, John's too modest, by half, to tell you himself...) Was going to wait until the newest issue with John's poem, is up on the Verse Wisco website, but am too thrilled to wait... Further, this might get lost in pages of holiday recipes and holiday survival stories...
Here's the poem, that Verse Wisconsin editors called, "Food, circa 1954".
Visit the Verse Wisconsin website: www.versewisconsin.com to see John's poem in the upcoming issue. (We knew John when.) -- Annie River
PROSE FRAGMENTS...JUNE, 1954 by John Bolinger
The Aunt Jemima toaster cover smiled
on the gold-speckled counter top,
where Mom made pot roast
for Aunt Edna and Uncle Lou.
Sunlight filtered through fruit-print curtains,
like an X-ray of Pete’s Produce Market,
while the twins and I played hide and seek,
and I stayed inside the kitchen window seat
with the vegetables until Donald threatened
to put my turtle Trudy in the oven
if I didn’t come out.
After pound cake with peaches, the radio played
“No Other Love,” a tango for trombones
that made my parents dance
over the salt water taffy wrappers
we kids had dropped on the floor.
Screens pulsed with moths
yearning for the Chinese lamp in the front window,
and when company was gone and I lay in bed,
I wondered if the next day my clothes
would still smell so strong of peppers and onions.
The Aunt Jemima toaster cover smiled
on the gold-speckled counter top,
where Mom made pot roast
for Aunt Edna and Uncle Lou.
Sunlight filtered through fruit-print curtains,
like an X-ray of Pete’s Produce Market,
while the twins and I played hide and seek,
and I stayed inside the kitchen window seat
with the vegetables until Donald threatened
to put my turtle Trudy in the oven
if I didn’t come out.
After pound cake with peaches, the radio played
“No Other Love,” a tango for trombones
that made my parents dance
over the salt water taffy wrappers
we kids had dropped on the floor.
Screens pulsed with moths
yearning for the Chinese lamp in the front window,
and when company was gone and I lay in bed,
I wondered if the next day my clothes
would still smell so strong of peppers and onions.
