Susanna Rich

Mumchy’s Photoshop

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

Blue, blue eyes my Mama had,
Mumchy says, like the sky,
played piano like an angel—
sobbing, adds,
The big flu took her.
Papa died of it in The Great War.

She unrolls more tissue, shows me
the photograph, again—
a woman sits at a black baby
grand, another leans against it.
A little girl stands in front.
All looking into the camera.

This is my Mama, Mumchy says,
pointing to the face she glued
onto the woman at the piano.
This my Grandmama, pointing to
the glued-on face of the woman
who leans.

Mumchy’s blue shadow falls
over the photo.

This is me, she says,
finger pressed
to the girl’s glued-on face.

But the woman who plays is my mother.
The grandmother who leans is Mumchy.
The little girl is me.

Susanna Rich is a bilingual Hungarian-American poet and translator, a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing (Hungary), a Collegium Budapest Fellow, and Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Kean University (NJ). With two Emmy Award nominations for poetry, Susanna is founding producer and principal performer at Wild Nights Productions, LLC. Her repertoire includes the musical Shakespeare’s *itches: The Women v. Will and ashes, ashes: A Poet Responds to the Shoah. She is author of five poetry collections, most recently Beware the House and SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage.