Classic and Contemporary Poetry
JOHANNA PEDERSEN, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Mouth prickled by crumbs of flatbrod Last Line: Rocked in the swell of the old. Subject(s): Denmark; Immigrants; Danes; Emigrant; Emigration; Immigration | ||||||||
Mouth prickled by crumbs of flatbrod, I blurred glass with breath and desire staring at red clay shoes small as my toes - malaprops among silver in her corner cupboard. "They are all I have," she said, her English swinging in the hammock of Danish, "from the earth of my country." When the milk was warmed, a comfort for a child's sleep, she skimmed the skin off - a membrane fragile as the first tissue of ice on a road puddle, "The milkman left you his shirt." Though we were both island born she brought a grandchild little - language and land left behind: a pair of shoes cobbled from clay, the altered garment of an old saying, a voice adrift in a new tongue rocked in the swell of the old. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...EVERYDAY WE GET MORE ILLEGAL by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA EUROPE AND AMERICA by DAVID IGNATOW EUROPE AND AMERICA by DAVID IGNATOW THE VIEW AT GUNDERSON'S by JOSEPH WARREN BEACH MEETING YOU AT THE PIERS by KENNETH KOCH IN THE GLORIOUS YEMEN RESTAURANT by KHALED MATTAWA END OF THE RANGE by ANSELM HOLLO |
|