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Connie Wanek has written several poetry collections, including Rival Gardens, On Speaking Terms, and Bonfire. As an editor of the anthology To Sing along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, she received several awards. In 2006 Poet Laureate Ted Kooser named her Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Wanek lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

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Six Months after
My Father’s Death

by Connie Wanek
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It was Mother on the phone, and she sounded
well, finally out of his misery.

Her breathing was good, her lungs
clear, after the near suffocation


of his last year. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.
Drowning people will do anything for air.
People on couch
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Reader Comments

  • This poem is very compact. It tells so well a story...
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