Colleen M. Brown Memorial Prize in Poetry, 2017

 

 

 

We lived overlooking the walls overlooking the cemetery. 

The cemetery is where my father remains. We walked 

in the garden for what seemed like an hour but in reality must 

have been days. Cattail, heartseed—these words mean nothing to me. 

The room opens up into white and more white, sun outside 

between steeples. I remember, now, the milk hours, leaning 

over my daughter’s crib, dropping her ten, twelve pounds 

into the limp arms of her mother. The suckling sound as I crashed 

into sleep. My daughter, my father—his son. The wet grass 

dew-speckled above him. His face grows vague and then vaguer. 

From our porch I watch snow fall on bare firs. Why does it 

matter now—what gun, what type. Bluesmoke rises. The chopped

copses glisten. Snowmelt smoothes the stone cuts of his name. 

 

 

 

This poem first appeared in The Louisville Review.