Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

How It Passes

C A R O LY N K I Z E R How It Passes for Romulus Tomorrow I’ll begin to cook like mother: All the dishes I love, which take her Such hours to prepare: The easy dishes that are so difficult Like finnan haddie and beef stew “That I wouldn’t be ashamed to serve a king”; Her applesauce, bread pudding, lemon sponge, All the sweet nursery foods That prove I had a happy childhood. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be brave like father, Now that I don’t have those recurring nightmares Of jackboots on the stairs, the splintered door just before dawn, And the fascists dragging daddy out of bed, Dragging him down the steps by his wonderful hair; The screams as his spine cracks when he hits cement. Then they make him brush his teeth with his own shit. Though I know this is the price of bravery, Of believing in justice and never telling lies, And of being Benjamin, the best beloved. I’ll begin tomorrow. I’ll learn how to work Like my brilliant friends who speak in tongues, Who drink and crack up, but keep on working, While I waste my time in reading, reading, reading The words of my brilliant and not-so-brilliant friends. The 1970s ❚ 69 I promise to increase production, gather up all those beginnings Of abandoned novels, whose insights astound me As I contemplate their fading paragraphs. I’ll reveal how ambitious I have been in secret! There is plenty of time. I’ll find the starter-button soon. After all, young women are meant to meander, Bemused with fantasies of future loves. It’s just that I’m so sleepy tonight, so tired . . . And when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be old. And when night comes tomorrow It won’t go away. 70 ❚ The 1970s ...