Danny P. Barbare- Two Poems

Olives and Pickled Peaches

Sitting in their soupy water,
Floating olives and
Their pimentos
I use a spoon to finish off
Thanksgiving, and
Pickled peaches spiced
With cloves, as mother
Enjoyed my wife’s cooking
Sits back in the lounge
Chair, Gabriel, poodle, begged
The whole while, his life
Long mission, mother
Usually yelling at him for
Doing a Houdini disappearing
Act and peeing in the kitchen,
Meanwhile washing his
Diapers, drying on the
Damn patio furniture.
The moon half
Cocked in the kitchen
Window. My niece
Asking for oatmeal cookies
Good and crisp, I say.
The olives and pickled
Peaches seem to hit the
Spot every time in the
Middle of the leftover night.


Granddad’s and Grandmother’s

The screen door playing tag in summer
With all my cool cousins and young kin
Feet thumping, storage room, under bed,
In closets, running around the kitchen
Table, out the back by the oil tank,
Tripping over the faucet, over
The fence like an alley cat, times sweet
As a fig bush and a jar of candy, the sun
Down the hallway and the Atlanta Braves or
Football game on TV us lying on the bristly carpet
With poor big boy the Chihuahua waddling around
Granddad with an eye on the controls spitting
His mill baseball days of
Red Man in a Maxwell House coffee can
By grandmother’s Better Home’s magazine
Rack, dad taking her to Kash and Carry, uncles
And aunts in a stir of black coffee and cigarette
Smoke wind in the curtains, crickets singing the
Concrete steps to the narrow driveway.
The steps trudge up a thousand times
Happy as the ivy and hyacinths, the green
Painted porch and the cans of rocking beer
Overlooking the city on West Park Avenue,
One red light glowing on top of
The Daniel Building, a word here and there.
A caution light flashes one yellow light, Atwood
A bend in the road close to another road,
In the late 60s and early 70s.



Danny P. Barbare resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas. He has a deep Southern accent. Lived all his life in the South not having traveled far.