Seven Haiku
coming unstitched—
even the fake flowers
grow old
To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew
Image: “Seamstress” by Lily Prigioniero. “To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew” was written by Bradford Kimball for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
Speak
However difficult a door may be to open,
once you find the key it becomes easy.
—Enta Kusakabe
Summer Afternoon
With a bucket of sealant and a spent mop on a slow day,
my father sent Prince McMichael and me to muck the buckled seams
along the carpet rolls of pebbled roofing winter freeze and thaw left leaking.
To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God
Neither do I, but yesterday, in the hospital,
for two hours, I held the hand of a dying woman—
my friend’s grandmother, 94, barely intelligible,
and in unrelenting pain.
Exile is No Country
The trees burned first, ablaze in the inferno of exile.
The tsunami of death drowned the ones washed up by exile.