COLANDER FRAGMENT 1

She thinks she can fool me
that old woman in the kitchen
with her knives and strong hands
as if she too isn’t full of holes.

I know something about holes
how we plug them and drill them
open with toothpicks or flood
them in a deluge worthy of Noah.

I hear her mutter about her mother-in-
law who said her view out the window
was better than her daughter-in-law’s
even as they looked out the same

window and maybe she was right
seeing her mother died in the camps?
Thunder wakes roots and they begin
to march down the street again. Rain

widows the view. I hear her tell
her daughter: be a Viking, sturdy
like the colander, and let the rain
drain through. Daughter out there

running, blinded. Boys on bicycles.
Rain widows the window. Don’t
keep anything. Let birds beak
your memory. Raindrops like

holes. Colander solidly uncertain.
High-blooming pregnant daughter
loves the scent of dirt, wants
to inhale it. Mother and daughter

go back and forth exchanging one
chair for another. Like writing a word
and crossing it out. Write yourself
into a corner and fight yourself

out. Silence of thunder she thinks
she doesn’t hear. Whatever she places
in me for safe-keeping, I’ll store. I know
that what she wants, wants her too

all those lost people. Her work resembles
mine as she wrestles with words rinsing 
them at her sinking desk. Writes them 
trusting they will recover the whole.

PUBLISHED IN CONSEQUENCE, SPRING 2025, VOLUME 17.1, P.43