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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
![](http://www.thesomervilletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/stein_web-1.jpg)
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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