By Mercedes Lawry
I sit in the tomato red chair,
flanked by shingled light,
the grist of so many Aprils,
struggles and joys of bloom,
ladders of bird notes, my misbegotten
days and your absence.
Time shifts now, even as it hastens
and settles deeper in the rivers on my skin.
I probe the cinders of imagination
as if new words will emerge, spark a synapse
so that I might say something
revelatory, polished, like a bean seed
that will burrow into the dirt,
thrust out stem and cotyledon,
pod and flower, snaking up the wire trellis
to become green filigree and finally, food.
Copyright 2018 Lawry
Mercedes Lawry has had poems published in such journals as Poetry, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner as well as SHARK REEF. She's published two chapbooks - “There are Crows in My Blood” and “Happy Darkness.” She was a finalist for the 2017 Airlie Press Prize and the 2017 Wheelbarrow Book Prize and has received the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Prize from Twelve Winters Press. Lawry has received honors from the Seattle Arts Commission, Jack Straw Foundation, Artist Trust and Richard Hugo House, been a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and held a residency at Hedgebrook. She's also published short fiction as well as stories and poems for children.
All work by Mercedes Lawry
