Picaroon Poetry - Issue #17 - July 2019
Featuring poetry by Sharon Phillips, Peter Burrows, Kitty Coles, alyssa hanna, Crystal Anderson, John L. Stanizzi, Chris Hemingway, Sue Kindon, Kathleen Strafford, Jenna Velez, Maureen Daniels, Samuel Guest, Charlie Hill, John Son, Beth Bayley, Visar, Bethany W Pope, Luke Kuzmish, Gerard Sarnat, Chris Hardy, Erik Fuhrer, Christopher Hopkins, John Raffetto, Andrew Shields, Bo Meson, Brian Comber, Martin Zarrop, Kristin Garth, Maiya Dambawinna, David Bankson, Jeffrey Zable, Rickey Rivers Jr, Anthony Watts, Donna Dallas, Chuka Susan Chesney, and Tobi Alfier. Picaroon is, as always, lovingly edited by Kate Garrett.
Featuring poetry by Sharon Phillips, Peter Burrows, Kitty Coles, alyssa hanna, Crystal Anderson, John L. Stanizzi, Chris Hemingway, Sue Kindon, Kathleen Strafford, Jenna Velez, Maureen Daniels, Samuel Guest, Charlie Hill, John Son, Beth Bayley, Visar, Bethany W Pope, Luke Kuzmish, Gerard Sarnat, Chris Hardy, Erik Fuhrer, Christopher Hopkins, John Raffetto, Andrew Shields, Bo Meson, Brian Comber, Martin Zarrop, Kristin Garth, Maiya Dambawinna, David Bankson, Jeffrey Zable, Rickey Rivers Jr, Anthony Watts, Donna Dallas, Chuka Susan Chesney, and Tobi Alfier.
Picaroon is, as always, lovingly edited by Kate Garrett.
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Bethany W Pope<br />
Kě'ài<br />
My restaurant-buddy has a name I can't<br />
pronounce. I've tried, of course, but she asked me<br />
to stop. We mainly communicate through<br />
Google Translate and gestures. My Chinese<br />
is virtually nonexistent; her English<br />
limited to 'Hello!’ but we persist.<br />
After I make my selections, shovel<br />
bok choy, raw horse flank, and dumplings into<br />
my bowl and she loads it all into<br />
the steel boiler, she sits down at my table<br />
and teaches me numbers using mushrooms.<br />
She touches each head as she counts them out.<br />
I don't know anything about her life.<br />
I don't know where she lives or what she does<br />
for fun. I don't know how she lost her eye.<br />
I know that she's in her early thirties.<br />
I know that she likes K-Pop, coconut<br />
milk, and pictures of puppies. I know that<br />
she finds puppy pictures on the internet<br />
and stores them on her phone because after<br />
I’ve counted to ten to her satisfaction<br />
she opens a folder and shows them to me.<br />
She says the same thing about every picture:<br />
Cute, cute, cute. ‘Kě'ài, kě'ài, kě'ài.’<br />
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