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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JOHANNA PEDERSEN by KAREN SWENSON

First Line: MOUTH PRICKLED BY CRUMBS OF FLATBROD
Last Line: ROCKED IN THE SWELL OF THE OLD.
Subject(s): DENMARK; IMMIGRANTS; DANES; EMIGRANT; EMIGRATION; IMMIGRATION;
Mouth prickled by crumbs of flatbrod,
I blurred glass with breath and desire
staring at red clay shoes small as my toes -
malaprops among silver in her corner cupboard.
"They are all I have," she said,
her English swinging in the hammock of Danish,
"from the earth of my country."

When the milk was warmed,
a comfort for a child's sleep,
she skimmed the skin off -
a membrane fragile as the first
tissue of ice on a road puddle,
"The milkman left you his shirt."

Though we were both island born
she brought a grandchild little -
language and land left behind:
a pair of shoes cobbled from clay,
the altered garment of an old saying,
a voice adrift in a new tongue
rocked in the swell of the old.



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