Dorinda Wegener
Father Sings for Supper and Severance
What survives? My sister’s ruth;
a deed composition; his subject-verb
disagreement, father’s dementia
paling his eyes. The trust in our family
farm, marginalized. We have less
rhodora and ground blueberry than
before. Bind and yoke the oxen, rib-thin
―a second thought: everything is here.
We have always had chickens and beef.
Gut and liver, beloved throat
with aged esophagus, Eat! Take up
the tine, tune and sing, to cattle, to cattle!
I will wrestle long the withered heath.
―She will feed you: everything lese1 here.
1 Archaic/obsolete verb meaning ‘to lose.’
Dorinda Wegener is the Managing Editor and Co-Founder/President of Trio House Press, a non-profit publisher of distinct voices in American poetry. She is a former Joel Oppenheimer Award recipient, as well as a Showcased Poet selected by the NH State Council of the Arts and the NH Poet Laureate. Wegener’s work appears in The Antioch Review, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and Hotel Amerika, et al. She currently resides with her family in New York City.
Return to September 2014 Edition
What survives? My sister’s ruth;
a deed composition; his subject-verb
disagreement, father’s dementia
paling his eyes. The trust in our family
farm, marginalized. We have less
rhodora and ground blueberry than
before. Bind and yoke the oxen, rib-thin
―a second thought: everything is here.
We have always had chickens and beef.
Gut and liver, beloved throat
with aged esophagus, Eat! Take up
the tine, tune and sing, to cattle, to cattle!
I will wrestle long the withered heath.
―She will feed you: everything lese1 here.
1 Archaic/obsolete verb meaning ‘to lose.’
Dorinda Wegener is the Managing Editor and Co-Founder/President of Trio House Press, a non-profit publisher of distinct voices in American poetry. She is a former Joel Oppenheimer Award recipient, as well as a Showcased Poet selected by the NH State Council of the Arts and the NH Poet Laureate. Wegener’s work appears in The Antioch Review, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and Hotel Amerika, et al. She currently resides with her family in New York City.
Return to September 2014 Edition