Hearth embers singe the soles of my feet.
My hair, ashen, tangles in the treetops.
I turn my back to you.
To you it is the steppes of Georgia.
You, Cossack, gouge tracks, spew seed.
The bruised land yields up
unending riches,
the groans of Eve,
a loamy perfume,
bread,
so dark and hard to chew,
your eye must soften it
with salty tears.
Merilyn Jackson has published more than 1100 articles on dance, theater, food, and Eastern European and Latin American culture in diverse publications, (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1996-2020.) She writes regularly for Fjord, Der Theater Verlag. She was an NEA Critics Fellow at ADF (2005) and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellow for her post-Holocaust, food-driven novel-in-progress, Solitary Host. In 2012, she attended Peter Balakian’s (Colgate) and the late Tom Lux’s (Sarah Lawrence) poetry workshops. Her poetry is published in several print and online journals. Twitter: @Merilynjune and Facebook
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