Winters, Jennifer worked Key West,
flew north each June
to show kids like us the ropes:
how to coax angles from a rounded thing.
You need a table. You need
resistance.
Gather the tips,
so they spoon, like lovers.
Jab a finger
into that earthworm seam
so the monster submits.
Eight miles out
wildflowers waited, smiling
their plucked faces:
lupine eyes, daisy mouth.
I left you something, too,
under a bird-shaped rock.
I looked, you said. I looked everywhere.
©
's story collection received the San Francisco Foundation's 2008 Jackson Award, and her work has recently appeared in The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and other journals. Next spring, she'll be the writer in residence at the Kerouac House in Orlando. She keeps a hula hoop in her car.
