Rose Maria Woodson 

father thesaurus

​
lightning
          a long whip across
                    the knuckle clenched sky

tar
          tattooed broken skin
                    pressed in when lids shut tight
                              the door

glacier
          left us thumbing
                    on the left lurching side
                              of fallopian highway
          forgotten fossils
                    tossed over the shoulder
                              salt on luck’s altar

fathersaurus
          extinct died in a rage bog & hell
                    of slamming doors

fence
          never knew anything beyond your own splintered skin
                    never knew between
                              the planks chrysalis curled
                                        unfurled wings
                                                  bleating in the dark

stump
          you
                    stay here now
                              petrified
                                        you could be nothing more
                                                  than table

                              a place for keys & lilac sunglasses
                                             a place for a blue
                                             vase holding one red
                                                  ​rose sailing

---

Lantern

there is always
a bell
a floating arrow

tulips open
fog curtains
the heart

hieroglyphs
floating lanterns this trailing
summer night

let the dead
swim in
​a river of light




​​
--
Rose Maria Woodson is in the MFA program at Northwestern University. She has been published in numerous journals including African American Review, Blossombones, Ariel XXIII, Paradigm, Melusine, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Foliate Oak, Wicked Alice, OVS Magazine and Magnolia: A Journal of Women’s Socially Engaged Literature, Volume II.