Tag: Treasure

Treasure by T. R. Poulson

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Treasure

Tractor tire tracks like unbroken arrows
flanked the dull drag mark in parallel
lines along the lane we’d named Lake Road.

My favorite cow, dead. My grandma, dead
vaulted in a neat rectangle. At the service
I’d asked where the dirt for her came from.

I followed the arrow tracks—my first
time riding my yellow bike to the bleached
bones scattered in a gully like story drafts.

Twoee was flesh, dark among the stray
alfalfa plants and thistles that purpled
her resting place. Dandelions like toy suns.

She lay on her side, hips angled as though
still in pain, her tail’s black and white
tassel curved and tangled in bright briars.

Her head heavied one eye to dust. Her other
eye socket gaped upward, black. Her ear
with tag 32 pointed to the sky. Bugs glinted.

I twisted the tag from her, took it home
and paper toweled it clean. Kept it inside
my jewelry box with Grandma’s gold locket.

Everyday after school I held a warm bottle
for Twoee’s orphan heifer. Listened. Buried
my face in her fur to feel her life.

Why was life not enough? I returned to watch
the wreck of flesh. Beyond her, whitecaps
slapped dirt cliffs and ravaged everything.

*

T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum, currently lives in San Mateo, California. Her work has appeared in various publications including Best New Poets, Booth, and Gulf Coast. She is seeking a publisher for her first poetry collection, tentatively titled At Starvation Falls. Find her at trpoulson.com.

Two Poems by Bracha K. Sharp

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I AM REMINDED

I don’t always remember
how many prayers
are being said
by this world,

but it is enough
to lift up the window-latch
and watch, enough
to be with these dark vines

vibrating with wind,
to watch the clever squirrel
and the darkening sky—

and I am an observer
with eyes never
wide enough to see what
cannot be seen—

but I am reminded,
that somehow,
this world is always
praying.

*

TREASURE

I cannot tell you
how beautiful it is
to look at the world
aqueous, upside down,

how glancing
at puddles reveals
another world—

trees swimming
on the wet deck,
reflections from a sky
dripping with mystery,

this view that deserves
only hushed silence
and the full, unmeditated
understanding of closed eyes
that see so much now—

and will never come again.

*

Bracha K. Sharp was published in the American Poetry Review, the Birmingham Arts Journal, Sky Island Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Wild Roof Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Rogue Agent, and the Thimble Literary Magazine, among others. She placed first in the national Hackney Literary Awards; the poem subsequently appeared in the Birmingham Arts Journal and she was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Poetry Awards. She received a 2019 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Silver Medal for her debut picture book. As her writing notebooks seem to end up finding their way into different rooms, she is always finding both old pieces to revisit and new inspirations to work with. She is a current reader for the Baltimore Review. You can find out more about her writing by visiting: www.brachaksharp.com