THE PROMISED LAND

I have been romanticizing their story,
nothing romantic about it.
As children, my mother’s family was poor,
that came after Grandpa died.

Grandma gave away the land, 
her mind was never right and rightly so.
I will never know all that she went through,
her war torn world turned upside down again.

Sent here to married someone she did not even know,
all my freedoms acted out – I hope somehow freed her.
I have always felt so trapped – 
now wonder if it was nothing more than 
genetic residue.

Mother suffered too...
years of drinking took her life at 44,
they called it Tuberculosis, it was both.
Motherless and rudderless I have looked so long,
mistakes were made and never to be corrected.

I am not looking back that would be unfair,
my life.... my chances.... even those gone up in smoke,
are badges that I wear. I am alive and well – 
and standing here for them.




GRANDMA

Fusty
Dresses rumpled
Fractured English
Thick sun tainted ankles
Bare footed 
Splayfooted
Weathered wrinkles combating one another.
She sounded like a jabberwocky,
No – high pitched crazy,
No – not crazy – transplanted,
News accounts – a car submerged – brought her over
Someone drowning in the Mississippi River
John or Sam – or Martin –
He was the one she worried over
He must have been the risk taker,
Grandma embarrassed Annie, “Do not ring my doorbell”
Mom was cool, declaring “she’s my Mother”
When she came calling she wore two dresses,
Carried a worn out brown paper sack – wrinkled like
her face
Knocking on each door – peering through the glass –
Sam had a car and sometimes came to drive her home.
Once she baked me a cherry pie.......

Doris Jankus-Duke was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1941. She completed primary and secondary education in the same city. She married in 1960 and raised four children, eventually moving to Fenton, Missouri. She writes poetry that embraces her Lithuanian heritage. Grandparents Henry Andrius Jankus and Marianna Tennikat, from Lithuania and Latvia, immigrated to the United States in the early 1900’s and resided in Maryville, Illinois.