She hides in the east shadow of a thirty-foot wall. She might remember damp hands of ivy, but now she tangles only with herself, limbs on fractured limb, sparse leaves cupping small swallows of light. What can she say, embarrassed, when pink silk shoots out from her every cleft in April in—yes—the rain’s warm lick.
Amy Miller’s poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, RHINO, Tupelo Quarterly, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Her full-length poetry collection, The Trouble with New England Girls, won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press, and her chapbooks include I Am on a River and Cannot Answer (BOAAT Press) and Rough House (White Knuckle Press). She lives in Oregon.
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wonderful, Amy!
Excellent poem! Really captures Daphne’s dilemma as well as shame in a sexist culture — intimate and true.