poetry wednesday : cusp
Cusp
by Erin Coughlin Hollowell
Puzzle of bones, try to take time
out of a watch, stop sundown.
It’s all the same weave, all warm
from the compost, erasing
the written page to blankness.
In the morning, the shadow
of a hawk split the yard.
Inside your ear, mother’s voice—
stay away from that wall
or you’ll fall, you’ll feel, you’ll see
over. There’s another world inside.
In your pocket, you carry twelve black
stones, rosary of willing deceit,
accounting of misspent deeds.
If sand fills your mouth, spit. If salt
burns like a flame inside you,
ignite. Any shard can split
open your precious whole.
There is a crust, a crypt, a bomb
crouched inside. You witnessed blue
fragments of birds stabbed crimson
by black beak. Maybe it is blood.
Maybe it is only berries, too
ripe. Everything tumbles.
