Guest Rooms

1. 

some poems take years to arrive,

growing to the backdrop of screaming

cicadas, galahs, and mozzies in the ears

of the poet and in the netting of the lace

curtains in the дача’s musty attic

bedroom shared by the poet and other

annexes, which is what her mother has

become in her own family. like the years,

the words and the keys the poet has

to dig up to get back to the дача

after her cousin loses them in its back forest

along with their grandmother. not forever

like the root of that tongue, pruned

when the poet tries to claim a past

left ajar by a grief she can’t palm,

not like the coins she will amass

to pay it back, or forward; she’s not sure

how much is enough to compensate loss.

2.

in a faraway future, the poet’s husband

believes altruism is impossible.

she later learns he’s a narcissist.

they share the children, though not

forever. they teach them to race.

the poet wonders to what end. the pool’s,

says the husband, as if this will herald

a more promising future, in which

he talks her out of giving the grieving

mothers her best wishes. what can they sing

back to the earth other than their own

children? but the poet has already begun

to amass the coins, hoping somehow

to restore some sort of balance.

3.

in a faraway place that reminds her

of the дача, another family exiles the poet,

now a woman, to the annexed attic

lined with kids’ beds, then down to the bunks

that tremor with every citizen’s footstep.

the host asks her simply to write a poem

she knows they won’t understand; at any rate,

any less than her monolingual companion,

who, after the husband exiled her,

housed the poet out of charity in her family’s

basement.

4.

now that she has outlived

the children, and her own parents

have stopped asking for money,

the poet gives hers to the dead, trusting

someone will know where to put it. heavy

under their great-grandmother’s dormant bed,

a satchel the cousins had dug up and dragged

from the city, rattling with coins and questions

sleep can’t answer. what business

had they sown beneath a children’s

playground? they told nobody,

knowing they’d taken, not knowing

from whom. the coins remain

a secret, fastened like a ghost

story under the дача’s beds to haunt

forever. for whom had the coins been left

to unearth, if not for the children

whose ground it was? what else

could they sing back to the earth;

what can you?

Note: this poem was comissioned in partnership with Philanthropy Australia for their 2026 conference, supported by Orange & Sardines.