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Dona Luongo Stein, a former Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University, has had poems printed in U.S. and world literary journals. Her fifth poetry collection is Leaving Greece (Shanti Arts Press, 2018).

Country Music

Dona Luongo Stein

Listening to country music for stories
of lives worse than mine, I wasn’t qualified

hadn’t been an addict, an alcoholic
or coke fiend, or now white-haired lover and clean
though I was invited to Janis Joplin’s house

in San Francisco, an ordinary
house with no trace of Janis as she’d already died.
I was too late taking care of a baby

and a husband whose needs outdid the baby’s.
When the baby got to be three Mother said,

“When are you going to have another baby?”
I was astounded. What an absurd idea!
Another baby! As if one weren’t
already enough mischief loose in the world.

— Dona Luongo Stein

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