“Visits from Kin” by Pauletta Hansel

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What I loved best was listening
while the grown-ups’ stories swirled
like the milk in their endless cups
of coffee from the all-day percolator,
thick with sediment and time.
Don’t you be stirrin’ all that up now,
at least not while the young’uns hear.
I had the knack for disappearing,
not for silence, asking later
what kind of pen
was big enough keep an uncle
in, and what had happened
to the knife?

-Pauletta Hansel

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