Suzanne Manizza Roszak: “My Mother Weaving Shawls in a Wisconsin Field”

MY MOTHER WEAVING SHAWLS IN A WISCONSIN FIELD

It wasn’t anything we envisioned
at the airport—boxes of yellow wood
ushered past cuffs and sensors only
to land in direct sunlight. Yet here
we are. Hats in our hands, fingers on
the pulse of the horizon. Pray against
the farmers for a rainless April, old
men sitting vigil in a field of stunted
wheat. Before long the dust and grass
will make a platform for a loom.
Like each click of the shuttle says I
grew here
. Another decoration for our
wall of crops. It is impossible against
the grain, but I can already see the light
shift on the morning when my mother
will circle the house, seven shawls
in her arms. On the plane the air bit
into us, as though we would have to
pay again for asking to be transported.

Suzanne Manizza Roszak has had poetry published or forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Redivider, and ZYZZYVA. Roszak, who received her MFA in poetry from UC Irvine, currently teaches literature and writing at CSU San Bernardino and UC Riverside.

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