Spring 2008, Volume 4

Poetry by Brie Huling


Her Olives

Watching grandma slip mangled
fingers manicured into her recycled jar—
a sticky pickled story refusing fifty
years-- I would wobble a nursery rhyme
wobble, stuck somewhere between a page
and a daydream-- my little stool swaying,
tippy-toed to get just the right glass
from grandma’s gramma’s china cabinet.
The clunk of excited ice into four o’clock
while the man who didn’t love
her enough but still slept beside her,
snored to television, war stories repeated—
the bang of calm in his sleeping ears.
Slickery oval boats, passengers in pimento
preservers, I wriggled around the antiqued
edge but my sawed-off arms couldn’t reach her.


BIO:  Brie Huling was born in Eugene, OR in 1981. She spent several years living in Long Beach, CA and graduated with a B.A in Creative Writing, Women's Studies, and Sociology from Long Beach State. She has travelled all over the world finding much of her inspiration in the contrast of different cultures, worlds, and ways of survival. She is currently working on her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and spends most of her time riding the subway, writing poetry, and working in a jazz club in the east village. This is her third appearance in Verdad Magazine.