gifts

by Meghan Sterling

I sit at this table, the crumbs fallen

from my grandmother mouth

decorate the wood with its dry lace,

the empty jars stacked in the pantry

borrowed from my grandmother fear

that everything of use must be kept

as a talisman against poverty,

the drawers full of costume jewelry

in soft silky bags hedged from my 

grandmother desire for beauty at any cost

as long as it’s cheap, rhinestone glamour, 

satin bosom, patent leather shoes 

with buckles, hearing the call of the trains 

with my grandmother dread in the smoke 

that falls up into a sky like a flat white stone, 

like rows and rows of flat white stones, 

like a guard against the past, like the past

that’s only allowed to visit in dreams. 

Meghan Sterling’s work has been nominated for 4 Pushcart Prizes in 2021 and has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, Radar Poetry, The West Review, West Trestle Review, River Heron Review, SWIMM, Pinch Journal, and many others. She is the Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review. Her first full-length collection These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books) came out in 2021. Her chapbook, Self Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) will be out in 2023.  Read her work at meghansterling.com.