Every Distaster I've Ever Met Has Been Fraught
with swallows. What you don’t see
is the garden of mangoes, the world forgetting
it is homeless. Just like me to feel
like a new person, sitting in dirt
wearing plaid pajamas, red garden clogs.
I keep my audacities pressed in journals
I planned to fill with further audacities.
What you don’t see is how moonlight sleeps,
how we drag the lake for one another
with ecstatic fervor. Every catastrophe I’ve
ever loved has been brimful of swallowtails.
Just like me to mourn the peonies
hidden amidst fiery Montbretia, tiny mice
hastily escaping into the stone lion’s mouth.
is the garden of mangoes, the world forgetting
it is homeless. Just like me to feel
like a new person, sitting in dirt
wearing plaid pajamas, red garden clogs.
I keep my audacities pressed in journals
I planned to fill with further audacities.
What you don’t see is how moonlight sleeps,
how we drag the lake for one another
with ecstatic fervor. Every catastrophe I’ve
ever loved has been brimful of swallowtails.
Just like me to mourn the peonies
hidden amidst fiery Montbretia, tiny mice
hastily escaping into the stone lion’s mouth.
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). Piszk Broatch's current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Piszk Broatch's journal publications include Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered.
Art: Public Domain