Marci Calabretta
Caterpillar Season
Wild strawberries were blooming
as we ambled toward the cottonwood shade.
You were examining the prophecy of snowfall
in the measurements of woolly caterpillars
and I asked your opinion on the nature of happiness,
perhaps because you called me sister
or because I called you brother and stranger.
Tiger-banded dragonflies skimmed the grass.
Fern and myrtle, downy brown and black.
You laid the larvae on my palms without speaking.
I never knew you had such silences.
Overhead, wires heavy with starlings or crows―
I couldn’t tell against the steel sky. But I remember
later that night, the steam from our tea
curling above us and into our mouths, as though
the answer could last us a whole season of snow.
Brother Returns As Chrysanthemum
Didn’t we think we were more than this―
little suns unfurling above the earth?
We thought we were constellations
in soil, entire galaxies anchored to dust.
Ravenous, we believed our thousand
arms could hoard the horizon―
eclipsing ourselves even as we waned,
bereft of all but shadow.
Poem in Furrows
Not like my father’s labor, smoking pork
or selling horses, barebacked and bronze.
Nor like digging soil for a handful of lima
beans swaying on the stalk, hard and ready.
But it is work of a kind, the way we rake words
into the light like potatoes, threads at our elbows
dampening into sweat against the ribcage,
bushels behind us full of pearl onions or stones.
Marci Calabretta is the recipient of poetry fellowships from Kundiman and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Her work has appeared most recently in American Letters & Commentary, Chautauqua, and The MacGuffin, and her chapbook, Last Train to the Midnight Market, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013). Find out more at www.marcicalabretta.com
Return to November 2014 Edition
Wild strawberries were blooming
as we ambled toward the cottonwood shade.
You were examining the prophecy of snowfall
in the measurements of woolly caterpillars
and I asked your opinion on the nature of happiness,
perhaps because you called me sister
or because I called you brother and stranger.
Tiger-banded dragonflies skimmed the grass.
Fern and myrtle, downy brown and black.
You laid the larvae on my palms without speaking.
I never knew you had such silences.
Overhead, wires heavy with starlings or crows―
I couldn’t tell against the steel sky. But I remember
later that night, the steam from our tea
curling above us and into our mouths, as though
the answer could last us a whole season of snow.
Brother Returns As Chrysanthemum
Didn’t we think we were more than this―
little suns unfurling above the earth?
We thought we were constellations
in soil, entire galaxies anchored to dust.
Ravenous, we believed our thousand
arms could hoard the horizon―
eclipsing ourselves even as we waned,
bereft of all but shadow.
Poem in Furrows
Not like my father’s labor, smoking pork
or selling horses, barebacked and bronze.
Nor like digging soil for a handful of lima
beans swaying on the stalk, hard and ready.
But it is work of a kind, the way we rake words
into the light like potatoes, threads at our elbows
dampening into sweat against the ribcage,
bushels behind us full of pearl onions or stones.
Marci Calabretta is the recipient of poetry fellowships from Kundiman and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Her work has appeared most recently in American Letters & Commentary, Chautauqua, and The MacGuffin, and her chapbook, Last Train to the Midnight Market, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013). Find out more at www.marcicalabretta.com
Return to November 2014 Edition