TWO POEMS by Sarah Green

Dawn

What works is dish soap
squeezed and feathered over

wings. One wing per apron. One
entry per child. What

wings is leavening; not lard, not
thickening. What learns

is sore. What soaps is
womenfolk

in rubber gloves, is
old. We’ve known

the recipe for longer than we
say. We say it’s hard

to find the turtles. Everything’s
so dark. What you thought

gravel turned out to be fish.
What sparks

is kerosene. What spills is
years. Plankton are known

for ganging up. What lights
is dawn.

~~~~~~~~~~

Elegance

What we rolled lacked substance:
a pie crust animals would scavenge
away from. Under the kitchen, tunnels

crowd like royalty. Little noses

press and snarl. I got a thorn on my
thumb. I brushed a diamond from my
eye. Just another day at the bakery,

you said. Was that a hawk or plain

paper on the stuck window? One pool
became a backyard ducks flew in.
The garden suffered. The mother tied

a plastic wrapping to her hair.

Was it always wet? Were we always
backing out of a blind drive? When
you get home, save me a slice.

Posterity. I promised somebody.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sarah Green is a poet and singer-songwriter in Somerville, MA. Recent poems of hers appear or are forthcoming in FIELD, Cortland Review, and H-ngm-n. Her book “Signs For Come Here” was a finalist for the 2008 Walt Whitman Award. Her poetry has won a Pushcart Prize.