Thrush Poetry Journal
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Emily Lawson
​

                                                             Darkroom
​
 Skull:  beginning, in spurts,  to be exposed
in    the   black   bath,  a   night-blooming
flower. So silver gelatin swells, so the stain
develops. Why  shoot this  creature’s head,
its sun-bleached horns?  Or snap the child
    watching    a   cardinal   from   her lean-to   
  of  lashed boughs?  I watched you like that,
  wanting.    You’d say “capture” a moment. 
 So, your last captives:  cow skull, redbird—​​
then,  in    the living room—me,  with my
needlework and face turned away.   Glare
 floods out the window’s image.  I shudder.
Child no longer. Cardinal, no longer. And
   nowhere  here,   my eyes;  nowhere yours. 





Emily Lawson is currently a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in the University of Virginia’s MFA program, where she also teaches poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM and Split Rock Review.




​Return to January 2019 Edition