WONDERBUNS (LEANER TRADING PAPER) ©2026 John F Sendelbach
LET'S GO QUAKERS!
Second of the four, and the only girl they had
Three brothers and a quiet house and a little-deaf old dad
A grandmother with the hearing aids, the silence in the walls—
And a girl who learned to raise a noise above it all
On a Quaker field in autumn she would spell the good news loud
The plainest, quietest people, and she cheered ’em to the crowd
Q-U-A-K-E-R-S, she’d throw it to the sky—
A loud girl for the silent folk, and nobody knew why
So let’s go—let’s go, Quakers—let’s go, girl, go far
From the meetinghouse and the orchard rows to wherever you are
She spelled it out, she named it out, she called it all by heart—
Oh, the loudest of the quiet ones, right from the start
She went up to the institute, to the school that hears in signs
A house that lost its hearing sent its girl to hear the times
They taught her how to print the box, the wrapper and the name—
The outside of the sweetness, that’s the trade from which she came
Then the candy giant took her, and her hand was in the bag—
Every rainbow letter printed, every melt-in-mouth, every tag
Her name went out across the land and nobody ever knew:
The M&M’s the whole world ate had a sister printing through
Printing, packaging, wrapping, and stacking,
Box after box on the candy-bar tracking
Label the rainbow, letter the cocoa,
Seal it and ship it from Erie County to Hackettstown
A mint on the melt, and a Snickers, and a Mars bar,
Printed by the girl in the printing-press car-bar
Paper on the outside, sweetness on the in,
And her name’s on the nothin’ but the box that it’s in
Wrapper to the rapper, cheer to the choir,
Up the little ladder till the ladder’s on fire
Then they slide her, glide her, sideways provider—
And they hand her the paper…
Now they ran her up the ladder till the ladder had no top
So they slid her to the side, where the making has to stop—
And the girl who printed paper wrappers, box and bag and ream,
Spent her last long stretch of working life just trading paper streams—
Paper into paper, love, the wrapper to the trade—
The printed sheet became the share, and that’s the turn she made
So let’s go—let’s go, Quakers—let’s go, girl, go on
To a warm place down in Florida with the working mostly done
Two kids raised and a good long love, and the whole strange lovely chart—
Oh, the loudest of the quiet ones, with the printing in her heart
But here’s the thing they never tell, the truest thing I know—
Before there was a dog at all, she up and named her so—
“If we ever get one,” she said, “George”—just spoke it in the air—
And my mother came home later with a white dog waiting there…
Georgie Girl upon the papers—but George in every mouth—
The name went looking for the dog… and the dog came walking out…
So let’s go—let’s go, Quakers—let’s go, girl, go clear—
From the deaf-quiet house to the front of the crowd, she was the one who could hear
She named the dog before the dog, she spelled it from the start—
Oh, the loudest of the quiet ones, and the biggest little heart
Let’s go, Quakers… let’s go, girl…
She spelled it out, she named it home…
George in every mouth, and the paper into paper…
The loudest of the quiet ones…
Let’s go, girl…