Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jonathan Moya Jun 2019
In the stillness of a teacup morning
in Amsterdam a crowd with yellow stars
query each other, a collapse of
suitcases and stuffed pillow cases
huddled under a gas lamp at a corner square,
while those in the stories above slowly turn away.

A few days before the yellow stars were
twenty-one children with backpacks
dreaming of a long field trip to Deventer.
The school picture they posed for would
be discovered fifty-four years later
under the frame of an oil painting
of the freedom monument in Dam Square.

Sieg, wandering in the fog of Bergen-Belsen
his classmates part of the mound
of George Rodgers well published frieze,
the only one of them not camera shy,
made it back to his mother and sister,
forever now a New York Jew.

Before them the square hosted
the frail bones of yellow star seniors,
their children depositing them
silently and hurriedly under
the hiss of the lamp shutting
off from the night watch.

Daan sewed the photo
of his yellow star grootmoeder
on a wooden chair staring into the sun
into  the lining of his jacket
and felt its pressure on the day
when the train arrived for him too.

The freight train to the Westbrook stockyard
the stench of manure, ****, fetid hay,
the old scent of cattle mingling with man,
fear embedded in every board,
was, as always, on time.
the teacups
pans
and plates

they all talk to me

i'm overcome with uncertainty

and no i'm not crazy

but silverware
appeals to
my senses
Zonika van Zijl Oct 2015
A little more tea Miss? His voice suddenly grasps me back to reality.
His politeness has always been
his best quality.

Yes Jerry, some more tea
will be fine.
I wouldn't say, but lately
I do prefer to drink wine.

His old shaking hand pours just enough, like his butler hand was taught.
Into the finest pink teacups my grandmother once bought.

How I long for my childhood days where I didn't need to sit and drink tea all day.
How I long for the days I was still young and free to play.

Now it's me and my lady like life,
where I'm only allowed to dream about becoming a mother and wife.

-ZvZ-
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
You've taken too long to come haunting,
wading through instances of mud, of regret,
until my wanting has all but dissolved.

You've broken my spine with curious fingertips,
an innocent ghost with fireplace eyes,
where questions went unnoticed, unsolved.

You've come knocking with empty cages,
pulling behind what you'd begged to forget,
you spoke to my spine like needles, absolved;

until my teacups are dust on the shelves
and your flowers don't wilt, but burn,
of stove and house and noose and all.
Day 26 of NaPoWriMo.

— The End —