Dacha
We were trying to get to Narnia.
The four of us, pressed for time, huddled in a wardrobe
in upstate New York where we spent summers away from parents and stuffy Brooklyn.
We were mad when the world wouldn’t move us
and we passed blame around like table salt.
Our grandmas sat in the other room in floral robes as fitted as hospital gowns and discussed our appetites.Soon, they would call us back
to the old world for dinner.
Olga Rukovets is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Florida. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Passages North (forthcoming), Jelly Bucket, 5X5, Mixed Fruit, Opium Magazine, The Fiddleback, and elsewhere.
"Dacha" was chosen as a finalist for the 2015 Peseroff Prize. Judge Jill McDonough admired "the quick time and space travel, vividly sketching a recurring moment from a real, felt childhood in just a few lines."