My People Were Potato People

My people were potato people

Doughy peasants who stooped

To plant, then pick, potatoes

Resourceful to eat the lowly tuber

Boiled into thin soup

Day after day as sustenance

Over time, my people

Came to resemble their life source

Lumpy bodies sheathed in brown muslin

Polish women in babushkas

Held potatoes defiantly in their hands

A small sharp knife making swift cuts

Once I dreamed of Nana’s latke recipe

And that winter morning made

Perfect potato pancakes

Potato people are bygone

No longer hunched in fields

Filled with suspicious eyes