Vox Populi
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Linda Parsons: Checkers with my Granddaughter
She’s not out for blood but, like her father,
a natural strategist and soon has me
in her grasp. This lithe player at eleven
paints me into a corner—her proud
red battlements, mine hapless black.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice, she says.
It’s not that I lack attention or forethought.
I see in her the girl I was at the same age,
inching square by square, away from
the only life I knew, a checkerboard
of attack and evade: my mother’s war
of attrition, my stepmother’s detente.
I waver on the board. It’s time to sacrifice,
my granddaughter repeats. She double-
then triple-jumps me, just as I leapt
one mother to another, into my father’s
good graces—the playing field strewn
with uncountable dying and wounded.
I yield to a girl still a stranger to grief
and loss. I crown her victory yawp.
Copyright 2021 Linda Parsons
Linda Parsons is the poetry editor of Madville Publishing. Her many
collections of poetry include Candescent (Iris Press, 2019).
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Vox Populi 
My recently turned 12 year old loves chess. She is currently in my basement fiesta room making sure she only shows blank walls for her class that starts in a few minutes. I remember that age.
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Oh, but you won! The dynamic interrelationship of the pieces (people, events) and the moves (the way it all unfolds in the stepped two-line stanzas) is a beautiful thing to behold.
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Love you, Linda.
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Excellent!
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