From the Nursing Home Pantoum

by Valerie L. Egar

From the Nursing Home Pantoum
This is what she remembers—
hiding in a field of corn.
The stalks stand higher than her head.
Chickens scratch for grubs among the rows.
Hiding in a field of corn,
the earth smells like cows.
Chickens scratch for grubs among the rows.
A beetle scuttles over a clod of dirt.
The earth smells like cows.
Sunlight breaks through the corn forest,
a beetle scuttles over a clod of dirt.
She hears her mother's voice.
Sunlight breaks through the corn forest
and her left ear aches.
She hears her mother’s voice—
shrill, impatient, calling her name.

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Valerie L. Egar’s poems have been published in Barrow Street, Lullwater Review, Poetry Northwest, The Closed Eye Open, River Styx, and other journals. She lives in Maine.