my side of it?
wet potato peelings
land in the sink
Published by
Susan Antolin
Susan Antolin fell in love with modern Japanese poetry while living in Japan in the late 1980?s. In recent years she has served as the newsletter editor for the Haiku Society of America and the Haiku Poets of Northern California, co-editor of Mariposa, and president of HPNC. Her book Artichoke Season was published in 2009, and her collection The Years That Went Missing won first place in the Backbone Press haiku chapbook contest in 2020. Currently she edits Acorn: a Journal of Contemporary Haiku.
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I am constantly amazed by poets who capture such highly charged situations, and bring them with all their underlying emotion, into haiku form, and into the hearts of readers.
Ah, what is "it"? My side of what? The poet has deliberately not given us the backstory, so we are forced to supply something from our own lives. And who among us has no repertoire of such domestic angst? At the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes – I didn't realize but it must be a universal location for domestic disputes. Perhaps because it gives us the opportunity to be "doing something", diffusing our anger, working it out through the repeated cutting action of potato peeling, and having an excuse to not keep looking our loved antagonist in the eye, all these seem to render this task a perfect setting for the playing out of domestic misery.
The wet potato peelings – so mundane, yet so physical, so sensual and so astoundingly poignant.
Then the finality of the last line: "land in the sink". It really conveys the sinking of one's heart, and leaves the reader with a sense of abiding dread.
It also gives this reader the impetus to revalue his relationships, to redouble his commitments, and to appreciate his happiness.
Thank you Susan for sharing this genuinely affecting poem.
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Love the image that this wonderful poem evokes!
The sad, humorous poetry of the schlemiel. Wonderful.
Garry
I really like the opening line and the fact that I can read wet potato peelings but also "wet potato feelings" landing in the sink. Great wordplay!
Alan, With Words
my side of it
drowned out
by the disposal
the emotions this poem evokes… strong stuff!
Thank you for this gem!
This is such a powerful poem, Susan.
I am constantly amazed by poets who capture such highly charged situations, and bring them with all their underlying emotion, into haiku form, and into the hearts of readers.
Ah, what is "it"? My side of what? The poet has deliberately not given us the backstory, so we are forced to supply something from our own lives. And who among us has no repertoire of such domestic angst? At the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes – I didn't realize but it must be a universal location for domestic disputes. Perhaps because it gives us the opportunity to be "doing something", diffusing our anger, working it out through the repeated cutting action of potato peeling, and having an excuse to not keep looking our loved antagonist in the eye, all these seem to render this task a perfect setting for the playing out of domestic misery.
The wet potato peelings – so mundane, yet so physical, so sensual and so astoundingly poignant.
Then the finality of the last line: "land in the sink". It really conveys the sinking of one's heart, and leaves the reader with a sense of abiding dread.
It also gives this reader the impetus to revalue his relationships, to redouble his commitments, and to appreciate his happiness.
Thank you Susan for sharing this genuinely affecting poem.
Strider
my side of it
and your side of it
no goodnight
Beautiful Sue! I read it, loved it, and then noticed you wrote it the second time I opened my email…..!
I really liked this. I read the 'my side of it' as your side of the argument. Great stuff.
It’s just football. Grayline is an international tour company that has a local office in Jackson Hole and offers narrated tours of Yellowstone National Park. Do yourself a favor and stay away from these sellers. Unfortunately, many people became obsessed with the fear that there were parasites in their brains, which is an entirely false assumption.
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