Miniature pinwheels of lavender,    bunches I gathered under Grandma’s clothesline    then tied with a hair ribbon that had been my mother’s as a girl. I blew in and out of Grandma’s fresh laundry, making up stories I told to myself and her dog Pup.    Gypsies, Grandma called the tiny flowers,    left to run rampant through our yard and garden. Rolling down a lush grass hill, I’d grab up as many as my child’s hand could hold    on the way to the bottom. Reprinted with permission from Plains Song Review, 2008. Copyright © 2008 by Deb Walz

GENETIC DISPOSITION by Deb Walz

Three paternal great uncles    reared on fire and brimstone couldn’t escape the tilt from the elbow to the lips.    I think they all died with a telephone to their ear. My father hid Cutty Sark bottles in the toilet tank, wore sunglasses at eight p.m. and disrupted my slumber parties with his slurred jokes and stumbled gait. Eventually, shrunken and shaking, found his way down a grim path to the twelve steps. You’d think I’d have known better. But I have knotted the piercing thirst on my tongue, seared it with a burning cross, valiantly attempted to blot up the hunger with counseling, acupuncture and salve. When I saw the fangs of the wild dog rise up before me, I oiled my body with cloves and lavender, shook out the ghosts, and opened my throat to the scream that never comes. Reprinted with permission from Plains Song Review, 2008. Copyright © 2008 by Deb Walz

LINEAGE by Deb Walz

The parched field of seed corn remains, ditch lined by goldenrod and thistle. Dirt faintly edges the road where a driveway once led to a paint bare clapboard farmhouse, woven with morning glories and grape vines. Barn, corncrib, chicken coop, outhouse. Haunting generations gathered the guinea eggs, climbed the rafters, swarmed to the root cellar. Howling wind , now a mourner of milk swelled breasts, hungry children, withered dead. Only the Zacheus tree abides, branches stretched upward, as blessing, as prayer. Reprinted with permission from Plains Song Review, Vol IV, 2002 Copyright © 2002 by Deb Walz

LEGACY OF IMAGES by Deb Walz

Porcelain hands, veined stone blue, a single strand of weathered gold adorns the third finger, cradle this slate spongeware bowl. What matter of porridge, or hearth stirred stew did she fancy? Rosemary, dill, a touch of lemongrass, great grandmother's recipe woven as fine silken thread, through the generations. Potions whipped from the dusky iron kettle by river birch spoon onto cobalt and pallid tin plates. Robust, eager children, stomachs growling, scurry to the hand hewn pine table, impatient to fill their bellies. A hush, then folded tiny hands, only the howling wind and horse's whinny echo behind the solemn words of thanks. Reprinted with permission from Plains Song Review, Vol IV, 2002 Copyright © 2002 by Deb Walz

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