Poem by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

​Dinner 
​
if that be its proper name, but it was Supper
this special treat, boiled shrimp in the strainer,
side of fries to feed a family of five.
 
At least there was whole milk,
homemade sauces:
mayo + relish = tartar
ketchup + horseradish = cocktail.
 
Grace. Then cleaning of each crustacean:
shelled, deveined, de-tailed, de-legged,
while sitting around a ship-wheel table.
 
Each of the three girls with mother
seated in mate chairs. Father, captain.
Slender fingers working waste
 
into a tall tower to Poseidon.
At bedtime, singing like the sea,
the youngest, nicknamed Shrimp
 
silently oaring through
deep-shallow waters
of burrowing hunger.
 

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Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, a native Philadelphia poet, is author of six poetry collections, most recently COVID-19 2020, A Poetic Journal (Moonstone Press, 2021) and has been published in North American Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sequestrum Journal of Literature & Arts, Chiron Review, The Pennsylvania Journal, and Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, among others. Former high school English teacher, she now teleworks full-time as an Acquisition Specialist and is poetry editor at North of Oxford. http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/ ​

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