The Crone<\/p>\n
I wake in a city.
\nBodies cover the snowy streets.
\nThe left-over<\/p>\n
halves of people bend
\ntheir heads against dead chests.<\/p>\n
An infection rages in my eyes.
\nI rest in complete dark.<\/p>\n
My dead sister
\nsits at my bedside pushing<\/p>\n
my hair from my face,
\nwiping my forehead with a dead
\ncloth.<\/p>\n
I am a tree. I am a crone.
\nI stare into the flaring fire.<\/p>\n
I stand in a basement
\nfilled with brown water.<\/p>\n
I meet my sister at a carnival.
\nWe hold hands and run into the crowd.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m standing in a glass ball
\nfilled with fog.<\/p>\n
I turn and turn and turn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“The Crone” is reprinted from Chattahoochee Review.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Polly Buckingham’s<\/a> poems and stories appear in The New Orleans Review<\/em>, The North American Review<\/em>, The Tampa Review,<\/em> (Pushcart nomination), Exquisite Corpse<\/em>, The Literary Review<\/em>, The Chattahoochee Review<\/em>, The Potomac Review<\/em>, Hubbub<\/em>,\u00a0The Moth<\/em> and elsewhere.\u00a0 She\u00a0recently won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award and as a result has a fiction chapbook forthcoming from Hoopsnakes Press.\u00a0 She\u00a0was a finalist for Flannery O\u2019Connor Award in 2011, 2012, and 2013. \u00a0Polly is\u00a0founding editor of StringTown Press<\/a> and teaches creative writing and literature at Eastern Washington University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Crone I wake in a city. Bodies cover the snowy streets. The left-over halves of people bend their heads against dead chests. An infection rages in my eyes. I rest in complete dark. My dead sister sits at my … Continue reading