Sample Poems by Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios

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Rose in the Dark

Father performed the morning rites:
waking Mother with a cup of coffee

before rousing me at daybreak
for oatmeal at the green Formica table.

Overhead like a premature sun the naked
bulb hung, flashed its brassy smile,

inviting me into the gold of soon
that inched closer each day.

I folded each memory
of Father's morning ritual,

Mother's daily ice storms,
stored them among my lingerie

to trade, in my twenties,
for what seemed like love.

---

Sauerkraut

At seven I was too tall to stand
in the space my father had dug by hand
under the porch stairs
using tools I could not name.

Wobbly wooden shelves
held jars of thick blackberry jam,
tightly sealed mason jars of peaches,
and pears in syrup
like embryos.

In the center of the dank hole,
squatted a large crock
as grody as the ancient mummy
in last Saturday afternoon's matinee.

Flies buzzed black
over the heavy lid.
thick green mold inside
nasty
as the sweaty crevices
between my toes.

Here was sauerkraut, ripe and juiced,
mud-sour and alien,
the prized platter
at the center of our Finnish Christmas table.

---

Practice Makes Perfect

Mother intoned,
thumping with her ruler,

while I struggled at the keys.
I practiced the art of deception,

turning water to ice under a silk scarf,
coaxing my mad dogs beneath the table

to silence their whimper.
In a dream

I carried a dead child on my shoulders,
crept down the darkened hall

to the mirror expecting
a snarling beast with plundered eyes.

But there was nothing
in the shadows.

The hair on the backs of the dogs
began to rise.

But practice doesn't make perfect,
it makes permanent.

While I practiced the art of the silk scarf,
the mad dogs rose, growled and shook their chains.

---

When I Am Old Enough

I will climb to the top of the tree to hide
and bellow through the applauding leaves
spooning my song like alphabet soup
into the open mouths of upturned faces.
I will lie in fields of mustard and lupine
and they will grow catawampus over my head
and hide me in their open hands.
And when the nip of the willow switch stings,
I will not cry. I will not cry.

I will peer out at clouds until the dark grows tall,
birds stop singing
and stars pull me up past their pinpoints
to spaces beyond spaces
and I am in the deep alone.
And I will never, ever
have to go home
ever again.