Devon Balwit| Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats

Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats. Poems by Devon Balwit, selected by Ron Mohring as Number Two in Volume Eight of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.

Release date:  August 31, 2020 [49 copies]
35 pages
$ 9.00

Cover image: 19th c. antique indigo quilting cotton. 

Devon Balwit teaches and chases chickens in the Pacific Northwest. Her individual poems can be found in The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, Rattle, Bellingham Review, and Grist among others. For more regarding her online poems, her collections published and upcoming, and her reviews, please visit her website.

Madame Verdurin at War

Madame Verdurin’s heart battles with the buttery
bite of her prescription croissant, doctor’s orders,
her good-luck-charm against migraines, delivered
just an hour from the front. While shells slam
the trenches, churning guts into mud, she taps
her newspaper, sips her coffee, and reads
of the Lusitania‘s sinking. “How terrible!” she says,
and means it, comparing it to what she knows,
the most tragic of theater tragedies. She’s moved
though her face shows only rejoicing
at the flaky crust, the familiar soothe of coffee,
cream, and flour. She purses her lips
around the porcelain rim and tries to picture
the raggedy Boches and poilus. “May ours, the best,
win,” she prays, piously, flicking the page
to flatten it as she reaches for a second restorative
half-moon from her Sèvres serving-platter.