THE CHANGE INTERVIEWS
Poetry > Plays > Projects
Alice Shapiro
Alice Shapiro
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2:14 m
EUONYMUS ALATUS
By Barbara Crooker
Outside my window, the bushes have turned, redder
than any fire, and the sky is the same blue Giotto
used for Mary's robes. My mother says if she still
had a house, she'd plant one or two of these bushes,
and I love how she's still thinking about gardening,
as if she were in the middle of the story, even though
we both know she's at the end. Down in the meadow,
the goldenrod's gone from cadmium yellow to a feathery
beige, the ghost of itself. Mother, too, fades away,
skin thin as the tissue stuffed up her sleeve.
The scars on her stomach itch and burn, but inside,
she's still the girl who loved to turn cartwheels, the woman
whose best days were on fairways and putting greens.
On television, we watch California go up in smoke,
flames leapfrogging ridge to ridge. Here, these leaves
release a shower of scarlet feathers, as everything starts
to let go. Oh, how this world burns and burns us,
yet we are not consumed.
Copyright © 2008 by Barbara Crooker
(from my book Line Dance (Word Press, 2008)
http://www.amazon.com/Line-Dance-Barbara-Crooker/dp/1933456922/
By Barbara Crooker
Outside my window, the bushes have turned, redder
than any fire, and the sky is the same blue Giotto
used for Mary's robes. My mother says if she still
had a house, she'd plant one or two of these bushes,
and I love how she's still thinking about gardening,
as if she were in the middle of the story, even though
we both know she's at the end. Down in the meadow,
the goldenrod's gone from cadmium yellow to a feathery
beige, the ghost of itself. Mother, too, fades away,
skin thin as the tissue stuffed up her sleeve.
The scars on her stomach itch and burn, but inside,
she's still the girl who loved to turn cartwheels, the woman
whose best days were on fairways and putting greens.
On television, we watch California go up in smoke,
flames leapfrogging ridge to ridge. Here, these leaves
release a shower of scarlet feathers, as everything starts
to let go. Oh, how this world burns and burns us,
yet we are not consumed.
Copyright © 2008 by Barbara Crooker
(from my book Line Dance (Word Press, 2008)
http://www.amazon.com/Line-
Barbara Crooker’s books are Radiance, winner of the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 Paterson Award for Excellence in Literature; and More (C&R Press, 2010). Her poems appear in a variety of literary journals and many anthologies, including Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor)(Viking Penguin) and the Bedford Introduction to Literature.
