Exile
Fear would have me busy, its fingers
in my hair. But the cut parsley is
drinking from its baby jar of water.
Tomatoes rest under an orange net.
You can hear the house settle
in the wind. I have lost
my sense of duty to others
based on fear of not being loved.
I watch it step out of my skin and
row its way down the river, small
as a child. Though I won’t call it
back, I wave to it, offer it
a smile. Fear did its duty to me.
I pay it back with banishment.
⟐ ⟐ ⟐ ⟐ ⟐
This Tree Is Sorrow
I visit him every Christmas
where everything is dry in the vacuumed
memory sealed by death: the cracked
beds of his thumbs, the white gown
patterned with blue ornaments, the
crackling static permanence of
all that quiet, sparkling violence.
After the midnight sound of sirens,
the silver globe is hung with snowed-in
silence. In its bubble on a scented
branch floats a tiny hospital bed, white
painted legs adrift in sugared flakes.
A man sleeps in the bed, palms open,
his black eye a sequin in the colored lights.
/ / / / /
To acquire a copy of Dorothy Neagle’s new poetry collection Imagine A Woman, click here to reach the publishers page.