Dining Fine


Dining Fine

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An ESME Poetry Award Submission by Loralie Kay

DINING FINE

Up here,

perched up high on asphalt shingles

overlooking oleanders

and our neighbor’s yapping dogs

Up here,

my three daughters made the dare

we all scrambled up the ladder

lugging with us bags still warm

Up here,

laughter fills our all-girl outing

as I pass around the Big Macs

and the swollen yellow fries

Up here,

there’s no empty dadless chair

at the dining table’s end

just because he drove away

Up here,

we create a new tradition

we start fresh, we’re still a family

nothing broken fills this space

Up here,

we’re above the old-time mem’ries

how we once looked as a family

a new beginning now emerging

Up here.


I’m a mom, a grandmother, a writer, and a poet. I’ve loved poetry ever since my dad sat me down and helped me write my first poem. He then signed me up for high school journalism where I became the editor of the school newspaper. Later I attended Brigham Young University on a journalism scholarship. My writing ambitions have sprung back into life. I’m an active in the High Desert Chapter of The California Writer’s Club, was a mentor for honor high school students working on the Dorothy C. Blakely Memoir Project, and have written an award-winning memoir, From Mormon to Mermaid. I find ideas for poetry popping up all around me and love breathing life into them. With several poems already published—my fun is just beginning.


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