INTERVIEWS
The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > ISSUE THIRTY-EIGHT: Feb-Mar (07) > Poetry >Ona Gritz - 1971, Winter in Queens

Pigeon-colored slush piles line the road.
Rain patters against the windshield.
I watch the drops eat one another
on their slow trip down the glass, notice
the closed car smells sour, like green apples.
My father's knuckles look burnt when we pass
the fluorescent signs of shops in strip malls,
his grip a tight fist on the wheel. At nine,
I already know I won't find beauty on tired
Mott Avenue. No saints on the sagging
front porches, no slender whitewashed
birch trees to light the forest of such nights.









Ona Gritz's second book for children, Tangerines and Tea: My Grandparents and Me, was named Best Alphabet Book of 2005 by Nick Jr. Family Magazine. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Paterson Literary Review, Moment, The American Voice, Poetry East, Literary Mama, Flashquake, Ekphrasis, where she was a finalist for the 2004 Ekphrasis prize, and Tattoo Highway, where she was awarded first prize in poetry in their August 2005 Picture Worth 500 Words contest. Her chapbook of poems, Left Standing, was recently released by Finishing Line Press. Ona is also a columnist for Literary Mama. Her essays have appeared and are forthcoming in It´s A Boy, Women Writers on Raising Sons, and O, The Oprah Magazine.
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