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EACH WORD HOLDS THE WORLD by Joe Wilkins

October 1, 2010 Contributed By: Joe Wilkins

The sky gray as dishrags, she wore anyway
cutoffs and a pink bikini top, black mascara, inked snake forever
curling up her thigh. As if to gather up some secret sun,
she leaned into the fence. Then slipped

a menthol between her lips. More than once I’ve seen her
leg her way into a rust-bitten Ford—
one slope-jawed boy or another
draped over the wheel, a sneer for this girl

and all the world—and not even give a look
to her shambling, diabetic grandfather,
fumbling with the screen door, hacking a lung of tire-kicked dust.
That day the apples, too,

were falling. Worm-bitten, bird-pecked—
of a sudden she kicked a fist-sized fruit down the gravel,
and the sound wasn’t right, the puff of dust that rose
almost iridescent, a bit of spun light

spilled by such ordinary thoughtlessness
and rot. She saw it too. For she kicked another,
gave a laugh. All week I’ve been hearing her—creek water,
plucked strings, apple blossoms dropping on the breeze—

and fearing I too shamble through some stygian,
sugarless world. So, as now I do, I turn
to you, ten-week’s child—you,

whose fingers daily drink your mother’s face,
whose blue walls still bellow and sing—
and say to you some ordinary thing.

Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: October 1, 2010

Further Reading

What I Don’t Know about My Mother
by Graham Guest

(1)        I don’t know her real, legal name: her name at birth. Once, I thought it was Marion Bush, but that turned out to be wrong. Oddly, my dad doesn’t know, either. (2)        I don’t know who her parents, grandparents, etc., were. (3)        I don’t know if she had any siblings. (4)        I don’t know exactly […]

Between Green and Winter Fade
by Laura A. Powers

Barren wheat-fields are quite exquisite in winter— just one clear night the wind slants the snow to smooth blue—another morning rises.   Clipped long to disused skis, I carve rickety tracks, like fontanelles, over and across subnivean layers where lower-animals—a  mouse, a vole— can only survive and not deliciously live such a winter as this. […]

This Body I Have Tried to Write
by Ja’net Danielo

Who among us hasn’t wanted to kill the sweetest thing?

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