LindaAnn LoSchiavo, Apprenticed to the Night

Mekong Delta

They’re white as rice that wasn’t thrown at us.  
His stack of letters (nineteen-sixty-eight’s
Mail, barely legible) was saved, penned straight,
Not far from enemy lines.  Infamous:  
The Mekong Delta, toured by curious  
Loved ones, prepared to demonstrate  
Our grief, disarm now, do what liberates,
Surrendering to the incongruous.  

His presence here seems reconstructed as  
Those letters fold my world to paper wings.  
Why do brave words demand laments?  I meant  
To re-read, gather them for warmth—whereas  
I light a match, red breast flames releasing  
Angels illegible in their ascent.

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The Lockdown Poets: Still Here (anthology)

Digging Potatoes

Stepping on the edge of this shovel

my full weight sinks down into the dark

cold earth where new potatoes are buried.

Waiting to be lifted into the sunlight,

washed and dried, filled sacks of golden orbs,

treasure that only my ancestors knew

was life itself. The holy host that fed

our people until the blight of man and

nature left them to rot and die—there

in the green fields where Celtic gravestones

now stand crooked, moss and lichen covered.

Markers of my great long lost aunties,

uncles, cousins who would sit at my table

and laugh at the bounty before them

as I served up my tiny white spuds.

Elizabeth McCarthy

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