Tag: Poetry

Margaret Lerhe

I perform a rosary on your chest, a prayer of broken ribs.

Tonight fell on us like black starlings. This rain—a constant murmur,

In my maps of the market garden I always forgot to include your journeys.

Bloated tankers, lying in the starboard fog— cranes, mountains of coal.

To see the sequoias as plaintiffs, angry litigants calling their cases

“Let me show you my favourite place.” We left after morning coffee,

In the evening, trees silhouette like shattered veins, white of blood and first light’s frost.

During the night, the great migration began. Marlin, my faithful ‘89 Toyota, was jostled and shifted

Out of a quiet and hardly seen patter of freezing rain, beating a pattern of poissonce,

It rained so hard that in the morning my car had drifted to parts unknown.

Your smile is sweet as a stand of sugarcane at the back of Summer’s land.

Petulant in season and out, eyes that taunt the lion