"Jeremiah was a bullfrog" by Sharon Waller Knutson

blares through the thin walls
of my geriatric parents' apartment
in the nineteen eighties

while my mother is watching her soap opera
and my father is napping on the couch
and I am drying the dishes in the drainer.
I pound on the door next to us.

A tall twentysomething man with sandy
hair and big biceps breathes heavily as he dances
in front of the door while Three Dog Night
shouts “joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea”

and the toddler with corkscrew curls
springing around her moon face giggles,
arms wrapped around his red neck.
“Can you turn the music down?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says.” Sorry, it’s my daughter Kacee’s
favorite song. I’m Kevin and this is my wife,
Katie.” He puts his arm around the tiny waist
of a brown-eyed brunette who smiles at me.

The next time I bang on their apartment
door after hearing shouting and swearing,
the door swings open and I see Katie
cowering in a corner while Kevin

stands above her raising his fist
and Kacee dances around the room
with scarves singing in soprano,
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog.”

Kevin rushes out the door past me.
I stare, speechless as Katie hisses:
“Stay out of our family business”
and slams the door in my face.

In the middle of the night, my parents
hear them hauling furniture
down the stairs and the next day
all we hear is silence.

Even though my parents are gone
and I am older than they were then,
I am still haunted by the sight
of a moon-faced girl dancing

with scarves and singing
in soprano while daddy beats
mommy and wonder
what has become of her.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published thirteen poetry books, including The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023), My Grandfather Is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024), and He Puts on His Poker Face (Cyberwit 2024). She has published 1,000 poems in more than 50 journals, including One Art, Poetry Breakfast, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and Silver Birch Press. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review.