Sandra Yannone – Ode to Breakfast

P Sandra Yannone LE P&W Vol 2 2019

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Poem by Sandra Yannone

Sandra Yannone grew up near the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Her interest in the Titanic disaster of 1912 anchors the poems in her debut collection Boats for Women (Salmon Poetry, 2019). Her poems and book reviews, have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals including Live Encounters, Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Poetry Journal, Women’s Review of Books, Lambda Literary Review, and Seattle Review. She’s also written a series of articles about the intersections of poetry and social justice for Works in Progress. Her work has received the Academy of American Poets’ Poetry Prize and an AWP Intro Award. She earned her B.A. from Wheaton College (MA); an M.F.A. from Emerson College; and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Currently, she resides in Olympia, WA.

Visit her at www.sandrayannone.com.


Ode to Breakfast

The granola wept for the milk
the jadite bowls held then lost
to the sink’s dervish whirlpool.

In this one year of clumsy magic
and lamp-lit grief, I’ve absorbed that
humility is not a party favor, not

a bouquet of red balloons to grip
lightly. And those starburst lemon
wedges that spun on a white plate

like a maniacal roulette wheel
announcing the fortune teller’s terribly
forecast crimes? I sat in her room

of knotted candles and believed
every crooked crossword
that darted from her mouth.

I have fallen a long way
to reside in someone else’s palm.
The fortune teller’s hands ride me

like grief at the altar of my feet
doomed to collect sentimental dust.
I do not want to be writing

this to you. I do not want
to dangle from the chandelier
of the fortune teller’s beveled

glass words. I do not want
anymore to eat
the granola’s tears for breakfast.


© Sandra Yannone