Maureen Kingston

Grandpa’s Carved Legacies


We found
two collections
after he died.

The one
we knew
as children

the whittled
wooden
wonders

the jungles

of smiling
giraffes
& monkeys
& pythons

& the other
one--

what
he never
wanted us
to see--

the hobo
nickels
of necessity.

Their bison
bodies
& Indian
heads

re-chiseled

to profiles
of broken
men

worthless

mutilated
coins
of the realm

passing time
in camps

bartering

for bread
for soup

a bed.

Maureen Kingston lives and works in eastern Nebraska.  Her poems are forthcoming in the Bicycle Review, Blue Collar Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Hobble Creek Review, Honey Land Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, A Prairie Journal, Red River Review, Rusty Truck, and Sleet Magazine.