Hannah Craig

You Start Praying for Wings to Grow

Last shift. My heart washes the dish
you laid those damn red berries in.

Strange, ok, the way some early moths
assemble upon the locust tree,

judged dead or alive by motion,
mostly. The way they suggest,

through movement, what will occur.
Each winter bud, naked, minute,

splitting into bloom. By movement,
I mean I have thought more

about what it means to be let go.
After all, there are only so many words

gathered on morning walks, so many
lessons the grass can teach us,

green cereal. That trees can teach us,
running their xylem sap.

At some point we'll learn from
one another, won't we? The blue bowl

was your great-grandmother's.
It will come to me, you say.

Unless I don't want it. Unless.
Maybe you'll give it to my sister, Mary.

I mean I have thought more about
what it means to be so hard-headed.

Even a stone submits
to change. To being detained,

pent up, washed away.
Have I imagined the white warning

that appears on each black moth wing,
signature of submission, of defeat?

Like they want us to admit we are leaving.
Like they heard we were fading away.

---

We Fathom

in a net you escape
new mud on these family feet

as if walking simultaneously
pretending not to be in the habit

of a white station wagon
that was perhaps your question

should i have been a dancer?
the boys on a beer run

hens peck squash rind
as if girding a book of sunsets

the sun keeps paging
orange/orange/red

how strange as if prey
calling out, feathers of sos

since we're in a net
i want someone you say

we're just using this soul
as an instrument of perception

have it back now
cold cans of Coors Light

old camera zoom
big mood

I am finally waking up
to how dark it is

---

--
Hannah Craig lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of This History that Just Happened (Parlor Press, 2017). Her work has recently appeared in journals like Copper Nickel, Occulum, Mississippi Review, and the New England Review of Books.