Shoes
First time I watch my sister set a fire
she’s twelve & I’se eight. Mama & Daddy leave
fa a card party, which mean Rosie & Billy
flee fa they secret flames
Poetry Prize
Baseball
My mother hated it. Everything
about it: the field, the players,
the ads, the incessant America.
Patsy
After the blizzard, my husband drives
out to the cemetery to check on his mother.
He calls it Just Driving Around to See What’s What
and neither of us talk about the winding road
Projection
What I took to be a man
cradling a woman in his arms and kissing her
turned out to be the gardener carrying
a pile of leaves he had gathered
Your Hands
Like coals they ashed me bit by bit, your hands.
The open fire thrilled me, I admit—your hands.
Slut
In the parking lot of Churchill’s Garden Center, my mother
turned to me and said, I found the pills. I asked What pills?
though I knew.