The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Erica Goss

SCRAPS

When I was seven food I threw away
reappeared on my plate each day until I ate it,
blubbering, licking tears 

from the corners of my mouth.  You had a hunger,
have it still, for green potatoes, rubbery turnips,
apples bitten past the seeds.

Dried cheese rinds, cold cups of tea,
and morsels of bread, always bread
littered the kitchen counters of my childhood.

If only I had understood their power,
your crude magic.  In the war the neighbors
called you Hamster for your talent.

You scoured torn streets with your little bag
while your mother and sisters lay quietly starving.
 "Bitte geehrter Herr, kann ich den haben?"*

At seventeen I drove until I lost sight of you
and flung my lunch from the blue Toyota, watched
it burst open, orange rolling away from the dented

sandwich, the small box of raisins intact.
I did not see you pick up scraps of paper bag
and wet bread hours later.

Had I only known,
I might have been a better daughter.
I might still be your child.