Poetry

The hope chest contains what my mother wants

me to cherish in the future—

lace curtains that lift like a glove at the height of being

tossed; a substance bracing itself with an absence.

I tap my toes when Mary, on cello, plucks the theme, a scotch-and-soda tune, her song about an evening we can stroll and strut away our aches, her dimples promising salt- laden shoreline breezes; drummer brushes

Our hospital conversation turns to snow and bitter cold, how it is the same this year as when we walked to school, snow way up over our galoshes, how it made those red rings

When my last lover      went, she left her long brown braids in the dresser drawer

so I hung them from the      garden fence to scare the deer away.