Leave It Behind
Page 4
although her shoulder muscles
strain to twist. She has to just
believe her sister follows her, wants
to come up from that soft place, wants
to feed her in her stupid grief
for things that have not yet
even come. She could fill
a room with that grief and still
have plenty left.
In this, she is alone.
The Mirror
In the bathroom before bed
they make moles with a magic marker,
one on each side of her mouth,
like hers,
and put the extra pair of glasses
on her.
Finally
standing quiet in the mirror
are the twins,
their secret visible,
just touching in the glass.
This is what
they have been waiting for:
not a reflection
but her,
a perfect likeness.
They want this.
This
is what I want.
Acknowledgments
“Fox Paws,” “Self-portrait as a House,” FutureCycle Poetry, 2011
“An Old Story,” Indiana Review, Fall 2008
“The House in the Meadow,” Big Ugly Review, Fall 2008
“Babysitting,” “The Game,” “Route 7,” “Turning Back,” Chelsea, 80, June 2006
“My Best Dream,” Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Spring 2006
“Darwin in the Andes,” The Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall 2005
“Spring, El Portal,” Gulf Coast, Spring 2005
“Milestone,” The Crab Orchard Review, Winter 2005
“Rain is Black and White, Like a Photograph,” The Antioch Review, Fall 2004
“Love Poem,” Agni Online, May 2004
“Driving Without Headlights,” The Brooklyn Review, No. 16, 1999
Leave It Behind came in second place in the judging for the 2011 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, FutureCycle Press.
***
The author would like to thank the Ragdale Foundation and the MacDowell Colony for the gift of time to write. Thanks also to her trusted readers—Randall Potts, Ramsay Breslin, Alison DeLauer, and Alison Powell—and her family for their unending support.
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