Susan Kress

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Origin Story II: New York

It’s an old story. Your parents born of
immigrants had too much to carry, could
never get a toehold on that slippery hill.
Besides, your father thought he’d skip a step,
bet big on horses, dogs, or cards but that just
meant you skidded further down when
bailiffs came to haul away the furniture. You
escaped, left home for another country, found
soil you could develop. Planted plum trees,
watched your garden grow then garnered the
delicious purple plums, too many for just you
to eat so you blew your horn and brought the
buyers in and they did buy and you were not
rich, exactly, but rich enough and you added
levels to your house, installed a blue velvet
sofa for lazy afternoons but you never sat on
it because you had to grow more plums, find
a formula for yellow ones and pink ones with
skins more silky and more luminescent but
the taste was not the same and you could not
remember how to grow the purple ones.

Susan Kress, born in England, now resides in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her poems appear (or are forthcoming) in Beloit Poetry Review, Calyx, The Southern Review, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, Salmagundi, and other journals. Three poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.