2019 Porch Prize Winner in Poetry
How the gray-white high rise
aadiffuses into gray-white sky, the
aaaametal bones melding into cloud, as
if the hard lines quietly thinned
aaas the steel expanded into vapor.
aaaaHow my mother’s body loosens its hold
on earth and daylight, language
aaand sense. How her hands that rise
aaaaand jab at assailants in the blank air
still reach for a tissue, placing the
aabox back on the table’s edge, tenderly,
aaaahow they wipe the rim of the bucket that
contains the retch of her dry
aaheaves. How her wide eyes in the
aaaabones of her gray face fix themselves
on me as she says my name, her
aathin voice wailing “sorry, sorry,
aaaasorry.” How can she know this lament
is my own? How can she reckon that
aaher eldest daughter, the one she still
aaaaremembers, would press her toward the
precipice, already pictures her rising
aainto mist, seamless like girders, glass,
aaaaand sky—gray-white bones vanishing in fog.