Darleen Coleman

CONTACT:
D. Coleman
7327 25th Ave., Kenosha, WI 53143
262-812-6599
1111drc@gmail.com
Instagram: @dcolewoman

BIO:
Darleen Coleman is a writer, artist, and junker. Her short fiction has been published in Great Lakes Review, Bird’s Thumb, and Undertow. One of her stories placed in the top 25 of Glimmer Train’s 2009 short fiction contest. Her poetry has been published in orangepeel literary magazine where her poem, “Every Place Has Its Sorrows” received a contributors choice award. Born and raised in Chicago, she crossed the Cheddar border nearly three decades ago. A member of the Kenosha Writers Guild since 2009, she lives in a vintage bungalow in Kenosha with the two lovely dogs who rescued her. 

Poetry

Every Place has its Sorrow

As a child I was happiest when my mother
and I left our flat on North Avenue,
with its concrete yard empty save for
five rusted garbage cans to walk to my aunt’s
green and white house on Maplewood Street.

We walked for blocks and blocks and blocks
enveloped in a sweet cloud of fresh-mown grass,
my father’s temper evaporating like dew
with every step. My aunt poured coffee
into thick green mugs while I found

a hiding place, a nest in the middle of converged
bushes where mantled in the perfume of lilacs
I sat cross-legged thinking about things
until my cousins’ shouts drew me out
to witness a sparrow sprawled on the sidewalk.

We kids scattered across the yard looking
for worms until the bird’s weightless body
went cold. We wrapped him in layers of tissue
and laid him in the center of an empty
shoe box tied with string cut from a blue

and shrunken balloon. We had a funeral
then, my mother, my aunt, my cousins,
all marching solemnly around the bushes
before digging a hole with my uncle’s shovel.
We all looked up to see the freed balloon

blend right into the sky like it had always
belonged there.  In a random patch of sun,
peonies loosened their tight-fisted balls
shedding soft pink petals I held to my cheeks
to cover the tears that weren’t allowed.

Later, I examined the big ants that roamed
the flowers, dark and shiny as my Sunday school
shoes. Head, thorax, abdomen—naming the parts,
made me feel solid. Later we chased fireflies
that turned our jelly jars into magic lanterns.

Crickets covered us in lullabies and birds
tucked beneath their mother’s wings
slept in nests I couldn’t see, but imagined
were safe and warm, and, like the house
on Maplewood Street, not meant for me.