Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
soon
When the phone rings in my grandmother's kitchen,
we run from wherever we are,
jumping from the front porch swing
climbing out of the mud-filled ditch out back,
running quick from the picked-clean garden-
but
my brother, Hope, is the fastest, picking up the phone,
pressing it hard
against his ear as though my mother's voice
just that much closer means my mother is
closer to us. We jump around him:
Let me speak! until my grandmother comes
through the screen door
down the basket of laundry, cold and dry
from the line
takes the phone from my brother,
shushes us,
shoos us,
promises us
a moment with our mother soon.
Written by Jacqueline Woodson
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