By VALERIE DUFF
Keep that smile
barbed, the wire
the horse leans against.
Birds crack seeds
on the other side of your glass
door. The body, blind, curves
its hedge down paths.
Time’s narrow microscope.
A clump of cells, narrow threader
juking the ground,
reverberates.
They say it’s gone.
It’s gone.
Everyone’s hands
shifting you gently,
no knowing
not knowing (you know
that now),
their silent nods,
stonecutter precision,
your plea for the tool.
Valerie Duff’s second book of poems will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2021. Her first book, To the New World, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize in 2011. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in The Common, POETRY, Salamander, The Boston Globe, PN Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor to The Critical Flame.
