Today's poem on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor (below) is by Marjorie Saiser, an award-winning poet from Lincoln, Nebraska, from her new book, Beside You at the Stoplight. Saiser conjures a whole world of drama and tension using the deft brush strokes of a few telling, vivid details. Click here to listen to her recent reading at Creighton University.
Hilda Raz, also a writer from Lincoln, Nebraska said, “Marge Saiser's brilliant poems are gifts of her vision. Packed with sensory detail and the multiple perspectives of the accomplished artist, Saiser's poems take as their subject all aspects of family life. Through generations on the farm and in town, these poems everywhere meet and match the predations of despair, poverty, violence and indifference with the assurance of love. Saiser counsels risk in the face of danger, faith in the natural world. She is the real thing, a poet working for us.”
Her Kid Brother Ran Beside the Car
by Marjorie Saiser
After phoning her father
she caught a ride from the depot.
Her kid brother waited at the bridge
and then ran, grinning, beside the car
all the way to the house.
He was taller and bonier than the day she left,
bib overalls hanging on his shirtless shoulders,
thick dark hair shaking with his running.
He clammed up and backed off when she
got out. She held her squirming baby
and stood at the driver's window to thank
the neighbor who had given her a ride,
a long thanks protocol called for.
Neither father nor mother came to the door,
one reading the county paper
and one peeling an extra potato, and it was
her kid brother who reached for the suitcase
and ran ahead over the cedar needles
to open the heavy door.
"Her Kid Brother Ran Beside the Car" by Marjorie Saiser, from Beside You at the Stoplight. © The Backwaters Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission.
Hilda Raz, also a writer from Lincoln, Nebraska said, “Marge Saiser's brilliant poems are gifts of her vision. Packed with sensory detail and the multiple perspectives of the accomplished artist, Saiser's poems take as their subject all aspects of family life. Through generations on the farm and in town, these poems everywhere meet and match the predations of despair, poverty, violence and indifference with the assurance of love. Saiser counsels risk in the face of danger, faith in the natural world. She is the real thing, a poet working for us.”
Her Kid Brother Ran Beside the Car
by Marjorie Saiser
After phoning her father
she caught a ride from the depot.
Her kid brother waited at the bridge
and then ran, grinning, beside the car
all the way to the house.
He was taller and bonier than the day she left,
bib overalls hanging on his shirtless shoulders,
thick dark hair shaking with his running.
He clammed up and backed off when she
got out. She held her squirming baby
and stood at the driver's window to thank
the neighbor who had given her a ride,
a long thanks protocol called for.
Neither father nor mother came to the door,
one reading the county paper
and one peeling an extra potato, and it was
her kid brother who reached for the suitcase
and ran ahead over the cedar needles
to open the heavy door.
"Her Kid Brother Ran Beside the Car" by Marjorie Saiser, from Beside You at the Stoplight. © The Backwaters Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission.
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