Author: J.A. Carter-Winward

A mother has a soul.
A soul needs

to walk uninterrupted down the train
and through each car,

emerging alone at the balcony
of the last car, steel shrieking,

black night opening
suddenly like a blade

or black parachute, sucking loose hats, change,
dust, into it,

divulging nothing. A soul
has seasons.

It practices death and rebirth. Its hair
grows lush,

then sheds; its love fills, then empties;
it dies absolutely

to the ground, but a root persists; or,
even roots wither

in drought, but a seed-case
swells—

then shatters—
dropping one seed.

A door slides open. White bones
turn, lightened & expressionless,

to re-enter the last car.

Anna Laura Reeve is a poet living in East Tennessee with her husband, daughter, and heirloom vegetable & native plant gardens. She’s working on her first poetry collection. Previous work of hers has appeared or is…

A flash somewhere, then suddenly
ponds that sprout starflower and shrub,
jasmine and beard lichen, spreading white fingers.
Rustling—here comes a net of curved horns
criss-crossing against each other, sturdy,
brown scythes moving slow.

The herd stops and looks. Now the world
is calm. See—no steps. Only the wind
pushing a branch caught on another branch. 
And then soft screams. They rise from
little mouths wet with mucus and tears.
The wild goats weep like a drone of hornets.

There—on the ground between grasses
and hooves, there spreads another pond.
Crimson, carmine, precious. Red sulphur
painting the dull rocks till they shine
like gold. Skinny legs set at hard
right angles, piled up unnaturally still.

Tan yellow fur ripped from skin
by a canine tooth and jaw—it dusts
the stone like fresh fallen snow.
Then, up the plain comes
the howling of hounds…