She didn’t get the memo. Dressed
appropriately in a white lab coat, she dangled
a stethoscope from her neck for show,
the way my sister does when one of us
is in the hospital. Friendly glance up
from her clipboard, she asked

Do I see a new expectant mother?

Clutching armfuls of Lamaze class
registration forms, baby magazines,
diet tips, name guides, exercise guides,
parenting class schedules, and prenatal
vitamin samples, I must have glowed
my one word obvious answer.

Is this your first baby?

She chatted as if we were old friends
as lit numbers did a floor count down.
It was day one as I looked months ahead
and told her it was my third…her face
metamorphosized

Well then, it’s old hat

she said as the elevator doors
closed behind her, steel, impersonal
and cold as I was dismissed
as an enemy to the environment, a breeder
or maybe simply a Catholic. I wondered
if her mother had ever told her

You shouldn’t talk to strangers in an elevator.

Painting an Autobiography

for Milford Zornes (1908-2008)

The rowboat is green,
abandoned like all the empty ones
in other paintings.

On shore,
out of the water
like a foreigner in a strange land.

Were you
alone
when you painted it?

A skiff beached
away from wharf companions
calling to friends and fishing boats

Laughter carries
on the wind, the motor
of a tugboat meting a ship

and at the center
of this watercolor explosion,
away from the action

a lone rock hides the boat
where no one else in the painting
can see it.

© Deborah P Kolodji

Poetry    Translations    Fiction    Essays