Awake at 3 AM, I want to plunge my fists into something, but don’t know how to bake the bread that others bake. The lilac light is hanging as the droplet-shaped bud clusters in my small yard, the plant I didn’t know was there until my daughter pointed out a bee-strafed bush. This spring is lush, the hemlock and holly bursting. Even the giant fir that shadows my child’s room seems to be thriving, its trunk wrapped in finger-thick vines and climbed with ivy. I know the tree is dying/needs killing, for mercy or to save my home, but I don’t know how to take it down. Instead, I keep my daughter in my bed, twined in my arms every night, my eyes open and dry as I listen for impact, the explosion of wood and glass.
Lisa Schapiro Flynn has poems in or forthcoming from Birdcoat Quarterly, The Tishman Review, Radar Poetry, Bluestem, The Crab Creek Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and others. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry, and she received Honorable Mention for the 2018 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize judged by Maggie Smith. Lisa has an MFA in poetry from Emerson College and has studied at Bread Loaf, VQR, Eckerd College, and others.
**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.