Poetry

someone never here left / a loaf of bread, warm, as if fresh baked

Five small, similar failures, / the handwriting innocent and terrible.

She shuffles through the morning kitchen / on the way to her back-porch cigarette.

First of all, lady, he wasn’t born dead. He lived. He lived.

then the touch of a nurse’s hand, a voice asking what faith I profess

I tell him about Eostre, / goddess of spring, who / (stories say) saved a bird / with frozen wings

I am in your kitchen now. / The cheerful yellow curtains buff against open windows.

plowing her grief into what she knew best / blessing the dirt in the seams of her hands

My toddler son tells me he will stop getting older by lying still

leaves preparing for winter leaving, crepuscular, desiccated, dust to dust, my mother, my fat grandmother, me.

I am a second-hand / kiddie harp, cherrywood tarnished / with elven fingerprints