POETRY  -
     With a Theme of Transition
Her eyes already moving elsewhere  - 
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Sheltering Home
​by Angie Minkin

​Rations, Liberty Loans and Victory Bonds. Armistice Day bells rang in war’s end. Oh, joyous crowds, oh, raging infections. Quarantines, masks, schools closed. Too late for the rag pickers, paper carriers, chicken farmers on Denver’s immigrant West Side. They kept working. My mother was three years old when her father died, flattened by flu’s third wave, skin blue, blood on his pillowcase. My mother spoke little of the racking coughs, the wailing. Her mother too poor to care for the children. The hands that pulled her away at the Sheltering Home for Jewish Children. My mother cried for her family, but often refused to speak during my grandmother’s Shabbat visits. Still she learned to tap dance, wore white hair ribbons, ate boiled chicken and challah. It was quiet when my grandmother brought her home two years later, to the little house on Albion Street. The dog-eared photo of that day: my grandmother’s slight smile, same as my mother’s, the same soft eyes. My mother shuffle-ball-changed in little white anklets, called me dearie. On her deathbed, she stared at her children, asked for her papa and the hard lemon candies he carried, her eyes already moving elsewhere.
​Born and raised in Colorado, Angie Minkin has lived in San Francisco for 40 years. She raised two children in the City and now shares her home in the Excelsior District with her husband and two playful cats. All of these gentle beings keep her grounded and happy. In addition to exploring her voice through poetry, Angie practices yoga, dances, and travels to Mexico whenever possible. Her work has been published in several journals and she is a coauthor of Dreams and Blessings: Six Visionary Poets, published by Blue Light Press in 2020. Angie recently won first prize for a prose poem in the 2020 Keats Soul-Making Literary Competition.

Other Works in this Issue:
Poetry 
Sister Stephanie Runs the Chicago Marathon
Tango in Havana
​
Bay Area Stew
In the Morning

Inside OLLI
Book Review:  Fog and Light - San Francisco Poets; anthology chosen by Diane Frank


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