You go hear the trad, concertina’s breathy
tune, a fiddle’s weeping, tin whistle
like a fog-shrouded dream, pint
of the Black to set your foot tapping.
I’ll be along when I can get this other
music out of my head—loud, off-key
hymns echoing in a cavernous chapel,
sisters’ voices raised against the sliding
melody of girls’ knees in the hall,
percussive sh sh sh of stiff brushes
scrubbing floors in tired, monotonous
circles, the dip-slosh-rattle of brush.
against lye soap bucket a bridge between verses.
In the laundry room, a waltz of agitation—
drum washers whine, sanitize our sin.
Stepdragdrag, stepdragdrag. Beet-faced girls
waltz too. They twirl, swoon, until
ring-around-the-rosy, they all fall down.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 1.
Marcella Remund is originally from Omaha, NE, but transplanted to South Dakota in the U.S. Her work has appeared in The Briar Cliff Review, Jabberwock, Poetry Ireland Review, Pasque Petals, Banyan Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Quartet, and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books, The Sea is My Ugly Twin and The Book of Crooked Prayer, (both from Finishing Line Press), along with Hysterian and Stroke, Stroke, both forthcoming in 2025.
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