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In a Time of Quarantine My Granddaughter Asks for Stories
Ruth Hoberman

but squashes her hands to her ears
when two bad ants fall into hot coffee.

She doesn’t like bad news.
You can’t have stories without disaster,

I tell her. Stop! she shouts.

Sebastian the donkey turns into a rock
and Harry the dirty dog

is turned away by those he loves. Stop!
I don’t want to hear.

Tell me a story about breakfast, and friends
swinging in the backyard,

and what time they went to bed, wearing
what pajamas.

She’s swinging now herself, aloft
over the shaggy lawn then falling back,

gravity fighting momentum—
suspense enough,

I guess, for any protagonist
new to hanging on.

—
For thirty years, Ruth Hoberman taught English at Eastern Illinois University. Since her 2015 retirement, she has published poems and essays in such journals as Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, Smartish Pace, RHINO, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares.

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