Sarah C. Harwell

D T

Dead

The way my daughter sleeps it’s as if she’s talking
to the dead. Now she is one. I watch her eyes roll
backwards in her head, her senses fold

one by one, and then her breathing quiets to a beat.
Every night she fights this silent way of being
with all the whining ammunition that she has.

She wins a tired story, a smothered song, the small
and willful links to life that carry her away.
Welcome to the Egyptian burial. She’s gone to Hades

Talking back to the mad world

I will not tend. Or water,
pull, or yank,
I will not till, uproot,

fill up or spray.

The rain comes.
Or not. Plants: sun-fed,
moon-hopped, dirt-stuck.

Watch as flocks
of wild phlox

appear, disappear. My lazy,
garbagey magic
makes this nothing
happen.

I love
the tattered
camisole of
nothing. The world
runs its underbrush
course fed by
the nothing I give it.

Wars are fought.
Blood turns.
Dirt is a wide unruly room.