I know a grave in the woods
tricked with running cedar, mulched
with hickory and storms, telling heaven
to dance cobble-rock and quail-feather,
tuning up the sprouts, and all the thaws,
so they smooth and wriggle, and they smooth
and bank up every skeleton against a ghost,
so they all sing, so they all remember names
that touch like the tallest willow’s shadow
cribbing across the face of an old woman
waiting to find me here at home and alive.
after you cut
down the dead
trees
the field yawns
and gives for the first
time in twenty years
a glimpse
of red beyond the shuddering
loblollies—decaying
metal and wood teeth
the remains of man’s work
no life except
a gray body
shell of hollow skin
Kaitlyn Gaffney is a north Jersey poet and senior Writing major at Rowan University. She serves as a poetry editor for Glassworks Magazine. Her work is published in Avant Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She has produced two original plays through Rowan. Rest-less She pulls at herself every day, […]
Read more "Rest-less"Back From The Dead I wait, patient as leaves. You like to speak of pleasant topics, & keep the thicket of the heart unmentioned. My breasts have changed, their fullest moment wasted. We will have to make our peace, me & the skeleton, me & the hourglass. I cracked the ice, a blow that brought […]
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