loves dandelions and stands with an open globe, and then blows and shrieks and looks for the next. In the ball field where we let the dogs run the grasses have gone to seed, the baseball diamond is unraked, the basketball hoops removed, so that kids in quarantine won’t try to play, won’t yell and shout and jump this spring. She won’t remember this. She won’t remember how we held our breath. The broad leaf plantain nods its swollen bud, bindweed twists through the chain links, a constellation of pink clover swirls through the smaller white. She picks flowers one by one. She sends them flying on the path of her breath.
Lisa Rhoades is the author of The Long Grass (Saint Julian Press, 2020) and Strange Gravity (Bright Hill Press, 2004). Individual poems have appeared at Barrow Street, Poetry East, Prime Number, Saranac Review, South Carolina Review, and Psaltery & Lyre among others. In addition to teaching poetry, she works as a pediatric nurse in Manhattan. She lives on Staten Island with her spouse and their two children. Find her online at lisarhoades.com.
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