Stars stud the black sky where the snow tree grows and I in my white bones housed among branches. Slender tree fingers, why am I here in yellow forsythia again, running among daisies. Now I am a leaf between the sky and the ravine. I will call on the wind Oh, Bright Spirit, open these
Even in the sting and sear of these shrapnel days, the gardens insist on their green rebellions, stubborn fists of tulips pushed through the lingering skin of frost and body parts, the lilacs by the Dnipro gushing violet beside grandmothers planting potatoes among the sandbags, hands wizened by survival, each seed an argument with the
My hummingbird does not arrive, it materializes, like an answer, suddenly not there and then is, an invention on emerald fly wheels, a drone-whirring of liquid engines suspended among the blooms on threads of wind and magic. What force each morning commands him to my garden? What bottle green and flaring fuse holds him in
Pink-beige shells and coral dust slept deep inside the limestone that patched the garden’s edge – pale scars where my mother tucked wild portulaca into the criss-crossing cracks of earth. I watched her hands move through the soil tending bougainvillea, periwinkle, and azure morning glory shaping boxes and squares of green against the pale, powdered
I want to learn to love my soft body as if she cradled clutches of speckled killdeer eggs, fat raindrops on ripe saskatoon berries, shaggy hayfields, just before their first haircut, or dandelion puffs, the bigger the better, blowing wishes. I want to learn to love my zigzag stretch marks as if they honoured a
There was no other salad in our home but salata. Greens from the garden spring through fall and the anemic head lettuce for winter. Oil. Vinegar. Salt. The recipe straightforward like all the women in the family. When I tear the leaves my hands are many hands: the thick, worn fingers of Baka the club-nailed
Like Father’s unfinished life, the half-dressed donated stone stands in the farm’s front yard true as an oak. A traveling mason settles for pasta and peas at the family cemetery. The youngest daughter whispers Father’s name in his hairy ear like a sad girlhood secret, her tears pooling like stars in his chip-pitted cheek. Later,
In the quiet of the morning, I dig my hands into the earth, lettuce leaves stretch to the sun, garlic bulbs whisper beneath the soil. Onions peek through, a humble promise, Roma tomatoes blush with summer heat, cucumbers curl, hidden in the green. Basil stretches its arms toward the sky, while thyme and oregano weave
in springtime, the earth rumbles and the sun-kissed soil begins to stir slender leaves suddenly begin wriggling their way to the surface, eager to drink misty raindrops and bask in the balmy air and I wait, with anticipation for the sturdy stems that will rise in the days to come, sprouting their bearded petals of
brittle snow countless needles dropping today I knit up sad and black into a sweater would not stay folded in the drawer how can a body stitched with bone fit in this? stretched, bed’s length all night weedy symbols root in the mind in the dirt outside under snow broken nails, pins are growing into
