About Bread, Germany, 1944
​
I can see myself. A small girl. White vest, black, ballooning
shorts, handmade. She stands on a milestone, giving her the height
to overlook the wheatfield, trying to see the wave.
In the distance a cuckoo calls.

The children have finished picking out the
potato beetles and their larvae by turning over each leaf,
walking slowly through the field where row after row
of the potato green thrives, ready for August. I see the girl
in front of the big farmer’s wife, her apron a sea of colours,
here and there slightly soiled. The woman presses
the big round loaf against her swelling belly,
cuts it in half and hands the child a slice as long
as two of her hands after spreading some lard.

The girl is walking home from the bakery.
The baker lady cut out two coupons from the ration
card. Under the child’s left arm, a big, crusty loaf.
With her right hand, and an experienced finger, she hollows
the bread through the crust from the exposed end.
At this moment she doesn’t think about consequences.

They picked up the last wheat from farmer Braun’s
field after he finished the harvesting. Mother
carried it home in a bag she’d brought. Left the stalks
to dry on the windowsill, beat out the grains.
She sits, the coffee mill between her legs,
her dress sagging between her thighs.

​If we find enough firewood, we’ll have
a small fresh loaf tomorrow.
If the train doesn’t get bombed,
Father will arrive just in time.

From her poetry collection LIFE STUFF, Kelsay Books November 2023.

Glamour

Aunt Lil wore her black hat at a coquettish angle,
its little veil pulled over her forehead.
She was Arpège and blood-red lipstick,
long, pointed fingernails to match, nylon stockings,
everything I wanted to be one day.
She bought me ‘Schillerlocken’*.

My uncle was a lawyer,
a tall tree in a forest of lesser trees.
He seldom bent down to my ten-year-old,
somewhat undernourished body.
With a stentorian voice he hinted
that I was making a nuisance of myself
just by being a kid.
I found out later that he had always thought
my mother a creature of a lesser race.
She didn’t speak like one is used to hearing.

It was whispered behind fluttering hands
that Aunt Lil had been a barmaid.
Now she was the wife of a professional,
was perfume and lace, and a deep-red slit
replaced her mouth when she laughed.
Which she didn’t do often.

The idea that this childless couple would look after me
for ten days while my mother went back
to East Germany (in danger of being sent to a Russian
gulag if caught) to sort out the lives we left behind in a hurry
had been hammered out between the women.

Uncle Fried looked at me across the huge dining table
as he would a fly and frowned.
‘Has nobody shown you how to eat
with knife and fork, child?’
My voice not quite steady from fear:
‘We had nothing to cut, Uncle.’

*
“Schillerlocken” is a sweet, cone-shaped German pastry. The name was inspired by the typical curly wigs that men, like the German poet Friedrich Schiller, used to wear in the 18th century.”

From her poetry collection LIFE STUFF, Kelsay Books November 2023.

BIO: A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and eight poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com

The Beggar

A sharp wind
makes me pull down my hat,
tighten my coat.
"Bloody freezing, innit."
He has no gloves.
His blue swollen fingers
barely close around the cup
which rattles in response
to the few coins I let drop.
"Thanks, mate."
He huddles a little deeper
into the recess by the bank’s
cash machine.

​"They should move them on.
Bring the neighbourhood down."
I turn. The owner of the complaint
is tall, blonde, sheep-skinned,
with tell-tale signs
of trying to stem the tide of aging.

I suddenly feel guilty by association.
Because I gave him so little?
Because I gave at all?
Because I smiled at her?

We Didn’t Know We Were Poor
​
Sometimes we went hungry, but not much. Mother made dandelion salad and stingy-
nettle soup. Potatoes and carrots in water with salt. Mother had been on the train again to visit farmer Ruttenberger. Left our last silver flatware with his wife. Brought back a big sack of rye. Can see her still, her too large dress, her apron, the coffee machine between her thighs, milling. Everyone was the same. You don’t notice if you have nothing to compare yourself to. My scary aunt with the deep voice and a wart on her chin would send us into the woods: ‘Don’t you go eating the blueberries now. Bring them home, you hear? I need them for jam making.’ There was a place near the brook, where the world smelled of woodruff and ceps, where bluebells announced our indelicate approach. Getting back empty-handed, round-eyed and honest-to-god we hadn’t found even one, my aunt wiped blue-purple stains from our guilty faces while winking at my mother. My uncle is looking for his cat with a darkening face. ‘I’ll find out who ate her!’

When I was Six

I remember the smell of
earth after summer rain,
the high grass hiding
me. It tickled, pinched
and stung. I followed
the activities of beetles,
caterpillars and assorted
small life.

Rolled myself packages of sorrel;
chewing them despite the acid
was the challenge.
Being hungry helped.

The lark slowly climbed
into blue. Became a small
black dot, trilling ecstatically.
My summer vision was framed
by green stalks of long grasses
and their seeds.

Standing on a milestone
I saw the fields covered
in shimmering heat, warping
invisible air. Cornflowers and
poppies between sandy-yellow
wheat. There would be a good

harvest. Yes, even then I knew
about harvests, watched the
sweating man and their flails.
Sometimes I’d take home
a pocket-full of grains.

Mother wiped my face,
hands, knees. My feet
permanently calloused.

The grains ground in the coffee mill
held firm between mother’s legs.
That last summer before
next May when strange men

​came in planes, tanks, and jeeps,
I watched André riding the brown back,
his face lit by the evening sun,
watched the oxen pulling carts,
watched the plow grooving
black furrows for the autumn
field, watched the swarms
of mosquitoes dance over the
stagnant pond and fell in love.