Cangkir Kaleng (Tin Cup)
by Kanita Mote
Photo Credit: Kanita Mote
I.
In her home, tea was a piece of her soul, always served in a tin cup.
80 pounds of luggage, 3 children, 2 tin cups
Dua cangkir kaleng.
16,000 kilometers, from the hot, tropical country of central Indonesia
To frigid, snowy, northeastern America.
Of those 80 pounds, only one was used for her own personal use; to carry her 2 tin cups.
Her dua cangkir kaleng.
She could not bring her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the best university in Indonesia
Nor could she bring her occupation as an esteemed university lecturer.
She sipped from her tin cup, worry etched in her youthful face, as she decided that to survive, the only way was to adapt; become American; assimilate.
She sipped from her tin cup as she came home, eyes nearly closed, weary from a day spent lifting elderly clients as a home health aide.
She sipped from her tin cup, a smile on her face, as she gazed upon a new nursing license, a victor regarding the spoils of war.
She sipped from her tin cup, pride in her heart, as her hair grayed, as her children grew, as her family moved from run-down apartments in inner-city New Haven to a brick house in the suburbs of Hamden, as she claimed her own version of the American Dream she was promised, claimed with the vivacity and aggression of the pioneers in the West.
She could only bring her cangkir kaleng,
but that was enough.
II.
My mother read this smiling slightly
Before chuckling outright
She pointed to the words and said
It’s not true
Not 80 pounds
But 240
And not 2 cups
But 3
They were for each of you, for your milk,
Not for me.
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The Bellwether
by Allyson Wuerth
The author’s parents, 1970.
If my mother had known of his pancreas
she would not have panned across the room
of their community college class to stop and see
the man whose body would interrupt itself so suddenly
in the cast shadow of a single day.
An organ closing itself off to the woman
he hands his grandmother’s rings to.
Could this have been the first sign? The organ
refusing her, refusing my father even the sweetness
off her lips?
Or maybe it became a symbol of his love,
how when we love, our bodies become
so certain of themselves
and starve at the doorstep
of another’s heart.
Whatever the cause, my mother once saw god.
Through the dusty moonlight, beside the bed
she shared with her own mother, god
told her she would always feel a glow
through the flesh.
And so the organ, unhinged, fell through his body
and through hers it sank into me.
Did she know it would happen this way?
My body so like my father’s figure—
the canoe moving them so slowly at first
to the damaged tree leaned against my heart.
If our skin had been stretched transparent,
our skin
caught in the glassy shame of a long sadness,
a brokenness that only she might glean
from her small desk in the back row of the place they met,
why did she not stop herself from crossing over
the yellow light
that fell between them?
*******************************************************************
Legacy
by Carol Smallwood
The author’s own legacy. . .
My grandmother pinned hairpin lace bibs
on grandfather’s bathing beauty calendars, crocheted jelly glass holders for Queen Anne’s Lace.
Her flour sack scarves–hemmed to look
like they had no hems, have hourglass patterns echoing her figure unfamiliar
with backs of chairs.
As the neighborhood midwife she whispered:
“garcon” for a boy, “jeune fille” if a
girl to keep such delicate things from children.
Aunt Lily said with uplifted chin, “I
never saw her apron dirty or saw her cry;”
my mother with shaking head,
“She looks at the hats in church.”
She died from complications of tight corsets, combs holding her Gibson Girl hair and handkerchiefs folded in fans.
About the authors:
Kanita Miyedadi Mote was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. She and her family moved to Ithaca, New York in October 1999 before moving to New Haven, Connecticut in 2002. She is currently a senior at Sacred Heart Academy and will be attending the University of Connecticut in the fall, in the hopes of one day fulfilling her dream of becoming a public defense attorney and immigrant and minority rights activist.
Allyson Wuerth received her MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. She has published in numerous journals, including: Connecticut Review, Quarterly West, and Cimarron Review. She teaches literature at Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, CT.
Carol Smallwood’s books include Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching, foreword by Molly Peacock (McFarland, 2012) on Poets & Writers Magazine list of Best Books for Writers; Divining the Prime Meridian (WordTech Editions, 2014); Bringing the Arts into the Library (American Library Association, 2014). Carol has founded, supports humane societies.
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