Dinner at Six
Just like every night, our family sits around
the canary yellow Formica and chrome table,
on stick-to-your-thighs matching vinyl chairs
eating a wintertime meal of the fifties: gray
canned peas, home-made potato soup,
a good chunk of meat. We talk about our day,
what my sister and I learned in school, how
piano practice went, stories from the store,
till I can’t resist and ask still another riddle
which reminds my father of a joke which
reminds my mother of an even older one,
and around the table we go, playing can you
top this? Mom leaves to answer the phone,
returns walking slower, looking older. Mary
can’t come to clean tomorrow. Remains
of a soldier near Seoul. Her husband.
We lean against our padded chairs, silenced
dancers in a frozen ballet of sorrow. For
once, my sister and I get up, clear the table
without being asked, keep to our room
where we hold hands stretched between
matching corduroy-covered beds, listen
to the murmuring voices downstairs.
(This poem originally appeared in KISS ME GOODNIGHT, Stories And Poems by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died edited by Ann O’Fallon & Margaret Vaillancourt)
About the Author: Diana Rosen writes essays, flash fiction, and poetry with work published online and in print including Ariel Chart, Dime Show Review, and Zingara Review, and many others. An essay will appear in “Far Villages” from Black Lawrence Press, and poems are forthcoming in Poesis, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, the art and poetry anthology, “Book of Sighs”, and a hybrid collection of her flash and poetry will be published as “Love & Irony” by Redbird Chapbooks.
Image Credit: John Vachon ” Dog sleeping under kitchen table in farm kitchen. Cavalier County, North Dakota ” (1940)
As It Ought To Be 