Poetry Festival will be held:

Saturday, April 27, 2024

2016 Winner

Cleaving

I speak my brand of broken Russian,

practiced in weekly, hundred-dollar lessons,

she her broken English.

 

She wants to know

about books I’m reading,

my best subjects in school.

 

We’re drinking

black tea out of brown mugs,

and I can almost hear the hollers

from the TV set in the bedroom,

its volume turned up to fifty.

 

Our words lull,

and I break away,

to the bathroom;

 

I look in the mirror,

above the yellowing

sink basin and translucent, orange

pill containers,

and examine the face before me.

 

A pointed nose,

a hand-me-down from her,

the only Jewish girl in her class —

the highest marks in her class.

 

I used to like to look at photos

of her when she was young,

her eyes dark,

light cast high on her cheeks,

her Mona Lisa lips just about to break

into a small,

and thick eyebrows

like the ones I wax every four weeks.

 

As a kid, I never knew

her real name —

 

To me, Baba, always.

To others,

Natalie or Natasha,

depending on her distance from home.

 

But that nose before me has been rounded

a bit, softened

by my mother’s father,

as American as they come.

 

I see golden-brown freckles

breaking through a fair complexion,

borrowed from my mother —

she’s speckled with some of her own.

 

Maybe one day kids will borrow parts

of this fragmented face

and sit with me,

speaking a broken language

I haven’t yet mastered.

Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest

Anna Rumer

Sidwell Friends School

Grade: 12

Hometown:

Spring Valley

Birthplace:

Washington, DC

Favorite Author or Book:

Interpreter of Maladies

Inspirational Figure:

My parents