Sandy Green
Sandy Green writes from her home in Virginia where her work has appeared in Bitter Oleander, Northern Virginia Review, Existere, and Qwerty, as well as in her chapbook, Pacing the Moon (Flutter Press, 2009). BatCat Press published her limited-edition chapbook, Lot for Sale. No Pigs, in June 2019. Her website is sandradgreen.webs.com
On the Luck Stone Bridge Turn-off No One Uses Anymore
Sandy Green
Winter 2020
She’s buried in our tangled family cemetery –
sister, twin, imagined one –
a knackered section of the old farm on Sharp Mountain,
among our ancient kin:
Abraham and Serena, Rufus and Charity
Mother tends the grave
prising the frame of green crabgrass
from the tiny marker,
Her hands reek of grief and frozen mud
while a frazzled juniper sapling,
points to blue infinity
Split-rail fences enclose the yellowed plot
Thin gray shoulders shudder against late March,
which clings to frosty fleabane, devil’s snuffbox, rabbit tobacco,
posies for another sort of dance
Mother exhales a funnel of crystals,
her white breath streams upward
flowing to the clabbered sky
sticking to the clouds
When her sacrament is finished,
her sweater chafes her wrists
and her chin shines in Ellijay apple red,
she huddles in Daddy’s blue-rust truck
ladling sorrow into his arms.