Tag: Redemption
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Brief Encounter on Aisle Five
Brief Encounter on Aisle FiveIt is this way:She sees him first—aisle five, cereals— where the honeyed light fall softly on him— and her. The way he cradles Cheerioson the cart’s edge—firm in his handsso if they slip, they fallinto the safety of the cart,into the touch of his little girl-—lets her knowhe once belonged to…
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I Should Have Followed You
I Should Have Followed You “Can I still call you Dorothea?”—even though the black and white lines in the paper reduce you to the habit you wore, arrange you into silence, a name and surname surrendered to the cloistering of lilies. Somewhere beyond this obituary, the grown children you once taught trace grief into their…
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Unfathomable Will
I found the city a pitiless thing.It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.I use to sit on the sea wall that edged my old college condo, the one I sharedwith a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-skipping the whistling part of his songbecause my lips could never purse the right tune- and watch the…
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After the Cure
I came back and I could see through the pane it had fallen, this leaning tree that grew pridefully close to the house,roots torn from earth in the winds.When all others died, it had survived the heat and blight, all the cold night winds, but not my separation, cure, return. I cried for its sorrow…
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Dogwoods
The rusted tips of the dogwood petals, fall after fall, indented to the shape of crosses, leaving bloody crucifixes after bloody crucifixes.The collected light, felt wounded,drenched in a suffering beauty, the kind the soul draws as perfectly straight.The red berries, past ripe are now wine. They stand naked in the air in lovely shame,past innuendo,…
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Land of the Yaupon Holly
When the wild-eyed white palomino died, the one that ran free among the Yaupon Holly,little Anne placed a magnolia, the largest she could pluck, on his mane. After a summer, Anne returned to his bones,wearing her palmetto angel wings and ivory. dress from the Christmas pageant the winter. before. She collected the last of his…
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River Ooze
Even though she couldn’t swim,Lena would go down to the river.She wore a blue bathing suitand carried a pink swim ring.She would awkwardly dip her tiny feet in the currentand feel its cold stingon her tiny ankles and toes.As the water grew warmershe would go furtheruntil the swim ring floated freely above her chest.There was…