family history poems

Aaron Harris™ – Paternal Grandfather | Matthew Scott Harris - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Aaron Harris™ – Paternal Grandfather | Matthew Scott Harris

My late paternal grandfather
culled from nondescript birthplace
Wherein Philadelphia
an urbane olde European-like city yet and base
For this poetic vignette,
which specific details I lack, thus will use lace
In the form of digital bitty bytes to affect how
Said hand sum man World War I veteran
Briefly characterized within this space
Drawing on opaque memories in tandem
with tidbits impossible to chase
With authenticity, yet he thee
aforementioned father o’ me papa carved with grace
Elaborate chair facades replete
With patented Doric columnar curlicues in case
A reader might reckon to espy his imprimatur,
Reflections sans two halves of the same wooden face
In silhouette if stared under aegis of Rorschach test,
This image imagination will trace
Drawing one to envision this craftsman
engrossed in whittling to erase
Any evidence whence once proud sassy tree
preceded becoming timber so human race
Could situate this gluteus maximus
snug as a plant potted in a vase.

Summer 1953 |  Roy Pullam - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Summer 1953 | Roy Pullam

His was a cabin
On Barker Hill
The view
Across the meadow
A haven
In the summertime
I loved to draw
Water from his well
The sweet taste natural
Just pure and cold
Evenings the kerosene lamps
Made shadows
On the wall
Dancing flames
Pranced across the wick
The different colors
Hypnotic
I would stare
At the pinpoints
Of light
In the semi-illuminate room
My cousins
Would sleep
On the feather bed
While I played grown up
Trying to understand
Adult conversations
Uncle Ed and my dad
Would talk old times
Sharing stories
Of their hijinks
With characters
I didn’t know
But both
Storytellers
Breathed life
In their corpses
Bringing them alive
For me
I would fight sleep
But eventually
It would take me
With the last
Of their talk
Slowly dripping
Into my ears
The smooth yarn
Dropping as gentle
As a feather

Migrant | Ananya S. Guha - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Migrant | Ananya S. Guha

Born 1957, 18th February, Shillong India. Welsh Mission Hospital. The eyes blue, so blue like a British exclaimed the doctor. A hundred years after the mutiny.
Mother came from Mymensing, now in Bangladesh. A migrant with no
stories of bloodshed, only that of one humanity. Hindu/Muslim. Now a migrant, I search for those living roots, of the land never visited spoken only in whisper.
The language I speak, half English/half Bengali. The roots have now
spread like tentacles gripping the wind for bird-like survival of the fittest.

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