The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer

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After She Dies, My Mom Keeps Getting Mail

Her last issue
of Eating Well
unless she acts immediately

Inside, a three-pea sauté
with mint and Aleppo pepper

I read the instructions five times

Commit them to memory

—

The Red Cross needs my mom
to save babies with malaria

and girls taken
into slavery

and people starving in a city
gnarled by earthquake

Is it any surprise
the ground heaves at its seams

I sign a check with loops so loose
my name could be anyone’s

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This won’t last forever
the sale flyer insists

Lavoie Family Furniture
is going out of business

These kind-faced Lavoies,
I want to believe them
but tell me how
they can be so sure—

four generations gathered
around a must-move table

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