Two and a half, she's playing her first
board game ever: Chutes and Ladders. Has already
mastered spinning the dial and taking turns. And when
her mother chirps, "I have a five," a plastic
red-suited bunny, small as a bracelet's charm,
clicks and clacks and clicks and clacks and lands
on a space far ahead on the looping red path. "Me, too!
A five!" her father exclaims. "Six!" Grandfather
springs ahead of them all. And then it's Gemma's turn.
Such concentration in that index finger the size
of a violet's stem. And when the needle stops,
"What is it, Mommy?" "A one."
"Look, everybody! I have a one! A one! A one!"
Ingrid Wendt is the author of five full-length poetry collections, the co-editor of two anthologies, and the author of a guide for teaching poetry writing in the classroom. Recent poems appear in Cutthroat, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Terrain, About Place, CALYX, and other journals.