Brings me back to our kitchen in the projects.
Cow curtains and magnets lining the yellow
refrigerator packed with food we couldn’t eat
for almost a week. Instead, we made meals
of leftover meat and veg from the lumpia,
mom up all night cutting and frying, all of us
dreaming of the grand entrance, Let them
call us poor when they see this! Every dish
a brick balanced in the façade, a challenge
to notice they were the cheap cuts and donations,
she had a gift for flavor no one could deny it,
until she didn’t, until, like so much of this life
it left her in the lurch without her last defense
there would be no more hiding, Let them
say what they want! and they did, she did,
my sister, tasting the fruit salad of canned fruit
and marshmallows, condensed milk, coconut,
what we had left in the cupboards, everything
mom could think of, everything but an apology,
so who could blame the cruelty, Let them
take it back with them my sister wasn’t trying
to cover her voice, It’s terrible, you don’t want
to try it she said, I couldn’t see to who, but heard
every word sitting next to mom who pulled in
her bottom lip the way she did when life hit her,
or a husband, or a daughter who maybe had a right,
maybe she thought, I deserve it, chin out, Let them.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 2.
J.D. Isip’s full-length poetry collections include Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His third collection, tentatively titled Reluctant Prophets, will be released by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. J.D. lives in Texas with his dogs, Ivy and Bucky.
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