Fine furniture made in the late years
between World Wars and marked “Germany”
sits on tiny needlepoint rugs
Mother made one summer.
Rearranged first by me
and then by the careful fingertips
of daughter and granddaughters,
miniature dishes and lamps
have lost their tags and stamps
that said “Made in Japan.”
Two weeks after the bombs
fell on Hawaii
Mother and I went downtown
to the small shop
a few steps off Broadway
eager to buy candlesticks
or vases of flowers
from the almond eyed woman
and her slender husband.
Hand in hand we stared
at the empty shop
door with a cross of raw lumber
battered plate glass window
held in place by wide strips of tape.
“Where did they go?”
She shook her head.
It would be four years before
we realized
the full meaning of the word
“internment.”
Reprinted with permission from the book, Breaking the Surface: Poems 2007 – 2009 by Janet M. Taliaferro.
Copyright © 2010, Janet M. Taliaferro.
Photo source: The Doll House of Queen Mary, Wanderings of the Night Sky Rider
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Janet Taliaferro is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and holds a Master’s Degree in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma, where she received the Geoffrey Bocca Memorial Award for graduate writing. Her novel, A Sky for Arcadia, was a finalist in the 2002 Oklahoma Center for the Book Award. She has published short stories and poems in The Northern Virginia Review, New Plaines Review, Deep Fork Anthology, Dream Quarterly International and Tight. She lives in Virginia but has been a summer resident of Wisconsin since she was eight years old. She is a member of American Independent Writers and Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
[Poetry Break Editor Note]