Sheri Wright

Interment

 

Color withers against the faces of blooms

as they hold the weight of grief,

heads bowed like mourners

in the cold of graveyard shadows.

 

And we fold the kind pieces of ourselves

into sympathy notes passed to the bereft

as the dead are fit into coffins

too small for rest.

 

 

The Test

 

Would you let her sit next to you,

the remnants of roadsides tangled in her hair,

rest her second-hand tatters

if only for a few miles?

 

And would you spread a balm of kind words

over the cracks fissured around her eyes

where beauty has splintered away,

and the pressure of years compressed over youth

fatigues her smile,

a smile she offers anyway.

She knows that poverty is

a heart that beats time to itself

because no one else is listening.

 

Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure.