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Poetry By
Adrienne J. Odasso
The Damage Done
In my dream, they told me that you
had died before dawn, but you were walking
again so soon. I took this as I'd take
news of recovery from sickness, though
I stared with wildest fear when you came
home in the suit that Mom had bought
for your birthday. Going-away presents
should not be gifts for death, but there you were
wearing it, smiling as if you'd been told
you had a fever. Not having blood
anymore is not the same as having
a fever. We went out to dinner
that evening, you in your suit and Mom
quiet and grave in a matron's dress.
Behind her hand, she said to me, "Be kind
to your brother. Don't run from him."
One if by Land
In front of me, a man is holding
a wooden ship in his lap. It has
black-stitched pink fabric sails, and rope
made from crafter's twine. At the prow, the name
REPUBLICAN is painted in green.
I cannot think why a model ship
should have pink sails and a lavender hull,
or why this man is carrying it
on a bus. My thoughts are clouded by color,
by the name, by the fact that the wind
is just so, and if he lets go, it might
sail out the window and shatter
on the rocks. Oblivious, the man smiles
sadly, dreaming of home across the ocean
for miles.
Not Eden
In a book with a yellow cover, I found
the name of a plant that I'd found in our wood
one February morning when an early melt
unshrouded the brush. The berries were small,
pink, and clear as dawn over the rise
of our mounded land. When we moved in,
my father looked at the mounds and said,
"We've got ourselves a burial ground
or two." But for the dead, I'd have roamed
farther afield, and it was then that I found
the berries cold in a pile of leaves
that my brother hadn't cleared in the fall.
They told me never to taste—no, not at all
for any reason—
but they were sweet, iced mint and sharp
as the season.
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