Fourteen nickels
Fourteen nickels
Joanne Epp
I don’t know what to do if our house caught fire. If I were attacked on the street.
I don’t know how to speak to someone who’s dying. How to be perfect. How long this earth will last.
After all this time, I still don’t know how to get grease stains out of a pair of pants.
In ancient Sumerian, I don’t know is nu.mu.zu. At the age of eighty, composer Giya Kancheli chose this phrase, from a language that hasn’t been spoken in four thousand years, as the title of his orchestral piece. Over twenty-two minutes, the music swings again and again from calm to storm, from a shrug and sigh to a shouting, fist-pounding I. DON’T. KNOW.
I don’t know why the man in the rear seat was banned from riding the bus. That’s what the officers told him. Where am I supposed to go, he asked. I dunno, they said as they led him off through the back door.
I don’t know who gave me this china cup. Why don’t I ever use it? (Ah, I can answer this one: because the cup is shallow; the tea cools too fast.)
The old man who fell on the sidewalk had a thin line of blood on his forehead. The traffic was loud, his voice was soft, and I don’t know what he said to me.
I still don’t know how to make peace with having to choose some things and not others. The fact that there will always be something to miss. Some things I should have said.
I don’t know why the man in pink trousers was yelling at his dog.
Some days I don’t know whether to give myself a pat or a shake. How to accept grace.
Two years after my dad died, his wallet still sat on the desk. My mom gave me the handful of change left in it. I don’t know what to do with fourteen nickels.
Joanne Epp
Poet
Joanne Epp lives in Winnipeg; her second poetry collection is Cattail Skyline (Turnstone Press, 2021). She has also translated the poetry of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg along with Sally Ito and Sarah Klassen --- which has appeared as Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (CMU Press, 2024).
Photography by Alexander Mass