Afterthought
If I twine loss with what loses,
I get disappearing, bones of doves
who once ate the evening’s marrow
and became stars,
ate until their hearts stopped
and recited the wild strawberries
of their stopping, and these birds shone
like elevators climbing a shaft
toward the indelibility
of my heart rejecting itself,
the perfumed light of its image
flying raw.
The sunset’s dialect escapes
in hushed drawls:
shhhh, mmmm, shhhh, a triptych.
“Afterthought” appeared in Sara Henning’s collection, A Sweeter Water, available from Lavender Ink. Purchase your copy today!
Sara Henning is the author of the full-length collection of poetry A Sweeter Water (2013), as well as a chapbook, To Speak of Dahlias (2012). Her poetry, fiction, interviews and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Willow Springs, Bombay Gin and the Crab Orchard Review. Currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, she serves as Managing Editor for The South Dakota Review.
This week’s Wardrobe Best Dressed was selected by Erin Elizabeth Smith. Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the author of two full-length collections, The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles Press 2008) and The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake Press 2011). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Mid-American, 32 Poems, Zone 3, Gargoyle, Tusculum Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She teaches a bit of everything in the English Department at the University of Tennessee and serves as the managing editor of Sundress Publications and Stirring.
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