The Friday Poem on 05/08/22
We chose ‘Crowned’ by Maria Taylor to be our Friday Poem this week because we like its immediacy, and its intimacy, and the way the narrator reaches way back into the past to locate the beginning of the story and own it as her own. Taylor paints a whole picture in just a few deft lines. The language is direct and clear but there’s also a dreamlike quality to the poem — there’s something inevitable and yet unknown about to happen, and we want to know more.
Crowned
Anna who’ll become my mother
enters the café. The matchmaker waves from her till.
Her nephew is thirty-eight.
Anna is thirty-one. She sees crowns of white blossom
crossing over their heads. A money dance.
Hears a baby giggle. It’s a poppy seed
of a plan for now, but her eyes shine.
In the café, Anna buys khata-ifi and Coca-Cola
for her sister’s kids. They’re growing.
The flat is cramped.
Anna cannot make herself any smaller.
The matchmaker walks towards her table
with a silver pot of tea and two invisible crowns.
She imagines a sugared almond on her tongue.
She wets her lips before she speaks.
