Poetry By
Emily Strauss
Published on: 5/1/2015
Scattering Ashes
The wind chopped the shallow bay our small tug skipped across the white caps, tilted and rolled into the troughs, headed toward the first buoy in sight of the coast road, we came to scatter the ashes from the gray box, dip your hand, throw them far, watch them sink 'look, you have some of dad on you,' she told her brother as the wind picked up, white ash blew into our faces, hands stayed dusty until we wiped them on our clean pants, feel the bone fragments, now return holding the railings, quiet, the box put away again, all over in an hour time for coffee and hors d'oeuvres back home, the dog whining, soup he froze himself, how did he know, the hospital bed set up in the spare room, but he refused, felt colder than duty on the Aleutians during the War, wouldn't play along anymore— we felt the bone fragments.
Published on: 4/28/2015
Dust Everywhere
fractions of a second after the Big Bang dust arose in massive clouds, filled what was empty— primordial disintegration slowly spinning hidden gods orchestrating spirals, rings gathering it into stars clusters galaxies dust pervaded the spaces floating in blackness collected on every surface dust grains formed continents mountains raining delicately on ferns, fences furniture and women noted this hung curtains fetched mops, rags began their battle against all the dust in the universe it seemed like shaking it outdoors to blow through other orbits, endless dust permeating the black spaces
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