Current
Issue
Volume 12.2
Joannie Strangeland
—
Shifted Abecedarian with Lentil Vetch and Laurel
Lattice or ladders, lacework of lentil vetch
meanders among the irises,
not like a stream’s meander but a memory
of ways that wind, the way that winding
paths channel the mind’s greener
quarters, where in the mind thoughts have not
run before, dense matter of synapses
seeming asleep, spindly dendrites like
tree twigs, the thought of all that
undone thinking stumble-struck,
vertiginous. That sentence needed to end
while I had breath. Today, the You Are Here
X is at urgent care where my father
yawn-slips to dozing with an IV drip,
zechins of half-dreams behind his eyes.
As he will tell you, old age is a
brawler, as fierce as the laurel that
crowds my backyard, hedges craving more
daylight, the sky their limit. It’s never-
ending, the task to tame those walls,
for they conquer fortitude, flex their
glut of leaves that crowned heads when
heroes rode chariots. Brave, my father inches
in and out of comfort, this day together
jinxed by the specter of loss, time’s
knife resting honed, ready.
Bio Copy here
