In the morning
In the morning I stand at the kitchen door looking
into the garden. Years ago I hung a wind chime
from a tree branch just beyond the steps. The tree
grew tall and took the chimes with it, lifted them aloft,
an elevator to the gallows, no Miles, just the faint
metallic tinkling. I expected the music to stop,
the metal to rust and decay, leather clasps to break,
but the instrument goes on making its plaintive sound.
It brings the wolves. They hear jingling and mistake it
for the cries of dying things, rabbits, small birds.
They come to see what there is to eat here, they
nose around in the grass and then I hear real
shrieks. When I was a child I used to lie in bed
at night and listen to the restless things, roaming.
On Saturday morning
On Saturday morning I drive downtown
to the farmer’s market underneath the interstate.
Card tables lined up in rows. Men and women
wearing aprons lined up behind the tables. Crates
of lettuce, berries, tomatoes, squash, sweet corn.
A table laid with pies and cakes. Another one
with donuts. One woman sells her handmade
herbal-scented candles, another tumbled
stones. Hand-dyed and stitched oiled leather
bags with cowboy fringes. Gouache prints on
card paper. Someone’s black and white
photography. I reach for a carton of pattypan
squash. The whole scene flickers and disappears.
When I get home
When I get home I make three bacon and lettuce
and tomato sandwiches, cut the squares of bread
diagonally to make symmetrical shapes. Neat.
Orderly. Fold a rectangular piece of paper towel
to make a napkin. Arrange the sandwich on
a plate. The plate is ringed around with tulips.
I see shapes everywhere and imagine how to fill
them in or make them repeat. Small square alarm
clock. Cylindrical prescription pill bottle shaped like
a piston. Friction is inevitable, is even propulsive. I
will not tell you about the two dead women. How
what happened made me ache to stay alive, to stay.
Doubt exists where questions exist, and questions
only where there are answers. Where can I hide?
Jennifer A Sutherland is the author of Bullet Points: A Lyric, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur and Foreword Indies Poetry Book of the Year, and the forthcoming collection, House of Myth and Necessity. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Plume, Birmingham Poetry Review, Arcturus/Chicago Review of Books, EPOCH, Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore.