cluster

reach of basil lush and wide already hardening because winter is just about to touch us like the willow tree that used to touch ground in new york state in the neighboring yard where i longed to swing on a gathered grasp of branches but could only cross the stone wall when the neighbor’s small feisty granddaughter was visiting the one who shouted you’re not my father whenever my dad asked her not to do something like touch the wisteria or throw wet clumps of leaves at the window and so instead we swung our small shapes on the lengths of willows ran to my mother’s lilies of the valley against the stacked stone wall the girl bowed over touching the tiny white cups with her fingers while i hovered in the side of her eye in case she felt more like destruction that day like when i walked into my room age 10 and found all my newly purchased makeup from the pharmacy had turned into an art project of my baby brother’s the mashed pearled pink lip gloss emptied crumbs of twilight blue eyeshadow back in the 80s when eye shadow eyeliner even mascara was a sparkly blue like my bicycle with a pegasus on the plastic basket that carried a cluster of seeded poppies from someone else’s yard the coral-red white and yellow blossoms already fading on the ride home

JILL KITCHEN

Jill Kitchen is a poet living in Washington, DC, though her heart can still be found in Colorado, New York, and London. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions and appears or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere.