The chickens with their throats slit right
across the street were less a blight
than curdling cries for mother’s milk
denied.

Your cousins who enjoyed the dance
who let us sway into a trance
while on the wall they sat, they kissed,
they sighed.

A quick goodbye and you flew west
then decades passed our names vanished.
I searched for you while husbands came
and died.

I press the phone against my ear
a stranger’s voice it seems I hear
speakingofthe many times
you tried.

I hold you close, our hug ignites
a potter’s fire, a poet’s delight
cavortinglike a carnival
inside.