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"Salem Song", "Viable Organ", and "The Weight of Skipping Stones" by Laura Ingram

Salem Song

October’s losing its dull yellow teeth

mother of field mice,

queen of chrysanthemum

dead flowers clutched in clenched fist

in this month of yellow leaves and red

sun with smoke wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl


It is easy to blame the early dark, the empty cellar, especially when

witching hour comes and goes without candlelight

we are all so hungry in the market of misplaced things

famine of memory, or maybe truth


An animal scuffles the forest floor

tail tucked into a steel trap

the men mistake it for a hairy specter

lay down inert and intimate with the dawn

bring nothing back but soup bones


In the dandelion daytime, children help peddle silver spoons

practice bloodletting in case of plague,

peeling scabs off skinned elbows

singing soft between beestings

they get their fill of rainwater

and we raise them on ragweed and skipping rope rhymes

leave them dreaming alone, three to a bed

while we sit in the city center

watching the magician’s wife flame into a

scarlet flower.



Viable Organ

After “My Heart” by Kim Addonizio

That roll of quarters for the phone call home

that three-way mirror in a department store dressing room

silver and speckled as the premonition of prophets

dream-spangled girl, divine as David

that chipped porcelain angel rotting in the rain amongst rhododendrons

that list of names stamped in the back of the library book

that baby bird buried by the creek bed

that funhouse, that freakshow, those twins with two heads—

that horror, that headstone,

that hole in the damp dark earth—

a mass grave for daughters who died with dish pan hands and phantom labor pains,

unmarked.



The Weight of Skipping Stones


Grief takes the stairs two at a time

rocks in the pockets of her raincoat,

bright pink and borrowed from love,


unsure if the next step leads to the river or the road

Flash flood warnings sounding over someone’s second-favorite song

Car headlights diadems in the summer haze,

in this royal procession from parking lot to drug store to stop sign

I coronate a Camry, brassy and brave as Diana with its tchotchkes tumbling from side of side of the dashboard,

No navigator on, with a wet dog hanging from the window, this is the Princess, bulimic and bewildered

I carry it all in my rucksack, because I, like anyone, have a bag and a body to carry it all, still a student, books and browned bottles and broken teeth.


I take the stairs two at a time, just as my grandfather taught me, just as my grandfather did before he died,

Because time is just at the top, wearing the raincoat of love, her pockets turned wrong side out, all her treasures of pinecones and skipping stones scattered over the foyer, and I gather the sticks and mud and a frog and snail, stay there, so still, on my hands and knees.




Laura Ingram is the author of four collections of poetry: Animal Sentinel, Mirabilis, Junior Citizen's Discount, and The Ghost Gospels. Her poetry and prose have been featured in over one-hundred literary magazines, among them Juked and Gravel.

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