A WORKING MOTHER’S MENU DUPLEX
We have easy dinners during the week.
We please ourselves with good simple food.
Pasta and salads are good simple food.
A nutritionist might not approve.
Grandma, a nutritionist, might not approve.
We love Grandma but we don’t tell her.
There are other things we don’t tell her.
We don’t mention you run track and play soccer.
She’d worry you’d get injured playing soccer.
But you’re athletic and don’t get hurt.
You’re a good student and sports don’t hurt.
Dad works nights as a news editor.
Weekends arrive even for news editors.
Dad and I cook up a storm every weekend.
Bio:
Christine O’Hanlon wrote advertising—TV, print, websites—for credit cards and cookie mixes. (Her grandkids watch some of it now on YouTube.) Her first book of poetry, The Bronx Years (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2023. Her work appears in Her Words, Paterson Literary Review, Voices in Italian-Americana, and in the anthology Rumors, Secrets & Lies. She is happy to announce her second book of poetry, Searching for Sisterhood, will be published by Kelsay Books in Spring 2026, about working in the male bastion of advertising in the 1970s, working motherhood in the 80s, and finding sisterly support in unexpected places.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 