Potato-fingers
Your voice is calling me
from an aroma-filled kitchen,
the pages of a book unfolding on the blankets.
What are you cooking, gran? Words echo in the staircase
as feet scurry up the stairs –
absorbing the sound of a groaning stomach.
You didn’t hear me. Smells great, gran!
The potato-fingers are crackling in oil
perking with their siblings,
the onion and the garlic.
(I stole a finger
as you’d give me your back.
You know, though.
You know that it sears my mouth.)
In the frying pan potato-fingers
harden, gran, like your fingers
peeling them. Your fingers are furrowed,
and potatoes are wheel-shaped, sometimes.
They know the scrubbing, the dusting, the cooking,
but not the yearning in our belly –
Where are your siblings?
Translation from the Maltese by Claudia Gauci
Potato-fingers
Your voice is calling me
from an aroma-filled kitchen,
the pages of a book unfolding on the blankets.
What are you cooking, gran? Words echo in the staircase
as feet scurry up the stairs –
absorbing the sound of a groaning stomach.
You didn’t hear me. Smells great, gran!
The potato-fingers are crackling in oil
perking with their siblings,
the onion and the garlic.
(I stole a finger
as you’d give me your back.
You know, though.
You know that it sears my mouth.)
In the frying pan potato-fingers
harden, gran, like your fingers
peeling them. Your fingers are furrowed,
and potatoes are wheel-shaped, sometimes.
They know the scrubbing, the dusting, the cooking,
but not the yearning in our belly –
Where are your siblings?
Translation from the Maltese by Claudia Gauci
Potato-fingers
Your voice is calling me
from an aroma-filled kitchen,
the pages of a book unfolding on the blankets.
What are you cooking, gran? Words echo in the staircase
as feet scurry up the stairs –
absorbing the sound of a groaning stomach.
You didn’t hear me. Smells great, gran!
The potato-fingers are crackling in oil
perking with their siblings,
the onion and the garlic.
(I stole a finger
as you’d give me your back.
You know, though.
You know that it sears my mouth.)
In the frying pan potato-fingers
harden, gran, like your fingers
peeling them. Your fingers are furrowed,
and potatoes are wheel-shaped, sometimes.
They know the scrubbing, the dusting, the cooking,
but not the yearning in our belly –
Where are your siblings?
Translation from the Maltese by Claudia Gauci
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