The Sunday Poet: Anthony Michael Majahad

Anthony Michael Majahad

Anthony Michael Majahad is an environmental chemist.  He and his wife, Dorry, move from Cambridge to Winthrop.  Mentors have been Jean Pedrick, Nina Nyhart, William Corbett, and Carol Dine; currently Susan Donnelly.  Poems have appeared in Marblehead Magazine, Suffolk University Venture, Bagel Bard Anthologies #6 and #7 and MSPS’s Waterfront CREW Chapter Anthologies.  He published online via North Shore Poetry Forum, Ocean Blue and Muddy River.

The Reception After

“Nope,” Nana says, in her

half West Concord and half Carver

Yankee accent, scythe sharp,

so sharp that it could cut through

the fog that would settle over

the family’s cranberry bogs,

on those frosty late September nights.

“Nope, I never go over to someone’s

house and eat after a funeral—

someone I know always dies.”

She picks up her fine bone china cup,

her hands shaking from the tremors

she has had since a young woman,

sips her hot tea cautiously and lights-up

a tightly tamped Camel cigarette

without missing a beat, or spilling a drop.

“I’ve seen it happen too many times before.”

I never went to Nana’s wake, or her funeral.

There must have been some sort of reception;

maybe at her house at 1620 High Street,

the last one at the end of the tarred road,

just before it became the dirt road that

meandered through the dark pines forest.

It is almost certain that if there was food there,

no one from our family took a bite.