Bronwen Tate

To Acknowledge Damage

One year
fearless she stumbles
top lip tooth-cut
             her suck
mingles milk and blood
 

*

Stirring damsons
steam and garnet
a friend’s sudden rupture
                       how suture
that longing to cradle

To See What’s There

Plastic owl perched
on a baseball fence
in the park
            your dark
wings then flew

*

Sonoma moonrise
full tomorrow          sun burns red
             against the ridge
             Cross the bridge
slow fog engulfed

For What Fingers Touch

Knuckle prickles
purl then pick
rough twig or grass
    a sheep brushed past
now shorn      spun yarn

*

We wind the wool
small son spins slow
             let baby sleep
    pinch here to keep
the tension steady

next author >>>

Bronwen Tate is an assistant professor of Writing and Literature at Marlboro College, a tiny radically egalitarian educational utopia buried in snow in southern Vermont. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Vesper Vigil (above/ground, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared in the Journal of Modern Literature, 1111, Denver Quarterly, LIT, TYPO, and elsewhere.