READ A POEM
by Stuart Friebert
Family in a Yard
There’s not much to go on at first,
a woman sunning, reading a book,
a man in a print shirt staring up
at the weathervane, some drunkenness,
a younger man working on a small boat,
a younger woman wiping a watermelon.
Hands under heads, water creaking.
The first to wake looks up: You
must come to the table at once,
an older woman says, money is lent,
chicken beautifully carved, swallowed.
After the rich cabbage soup, a girl
runs to the back porch to measure
the sofa for a new cushion. How easy
to tell the present from the past.
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“Family in a Yard” by Stuart Friebert from
Up in Bed: Poems by Stuart Friebert. Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1974. Used by permission of the author.
ABOUT TODAY’S POET
Stuart Friebert has published 14 books of poems; among them are
Funeral Pie, which co-won the Four Way Book Award in 1997, and
Floating Heart, which won the Ohioana 2015 Poetry Award. He’s also published 10 volumes of translations, as well as a collection of stories and memoir pieces,
The Language of the Enemy. Most recently Lost Horse Press published
Decanting: Selected Poems | 1967-2017, and Pinyon Press will release
First and Last Words: Story & Memoir in 2017.
WRITE A POEM
Write a poem about a gathering of your friends or your family in your backyard from the point of view of someone across the street who was not invited. The setting may be the past or the present, but make clear – without stating a date – what year the gathering takes place.