By Geraldine Connolly
Bitter ash your voice, like a cinder
your voice like a motor, revving
and roaring and whining, still.
When you were young and penniless,
you sold eggs door to door and made yourself
charming to get what you wanted.
Quarters. Cookies. Sodas.
I let the sheet of memory blow
like flapping linen. Your auburn
hair, high color, deceiving beauty.
Your love of pottery, stacks and stacks
of dishes, bowls and cake stands
cluttering the farmhouse sills, those
childhood rooms we never leave.
Many thresholds I crossed to arrive
at forgiveness. Now that you are gone,
I burn the wood of my anger. It turns
into cinders like the great fire we set
to destroy the coats for your rug braiding.
The flames entwine into the air, disappear.
You’re no one. Nowhere.
Geraldine Connolly is the author of three poetry collections, Food for the Winter, Province of Fire, and Hand of the Wind. Her new book, Aileron, will be published by Terrapin Books in 2018. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, and The Gettysburg Review. She is the recipient of two NEA fellowships, a Maryland Arts Council fellowship, and a Cafritz Foundation grant. Her work has been broadcast on WPFW radio and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac. She was executive editor of Poet Lore from 1994 to 2000 and has taught workshops for the Maryland Poetry-in-the-Schools Program and the Graduate Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. She now lives in Tucson, Arizona where she has taught writing workshops at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
