Grief as Garlic

By Kyle Potvin

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This winter I need the bite of garlic.
Prepare dish after dish. 
 
Sizzling shrimp with garlic (3 cloves, minced)
Garlic-butter steak (5 cloves, finely chopped)
Chicken curry (4 cloves, crushed)
 
Three of our mothers lost in as many months.

Requiem aeternam
Allium sativum

I swirl a raw clove around my mouth.
Smooth as a pebble
one should not swallow.
 
A pungency stays with my breath.
 
Garlic is pollinated by bees, moths and butterflies.
It does not have a mother.

Friends, we are the bees. 

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Kyle Potvin’s debut full-length poetry collection is Loosen (Hobblebush Books, 2021). Her chapbook, Sound Travels on Water, won the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone, SWWIM Every Day, The New York Times, and others. She is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review.

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