In fall we angel in the front lawn,
the fallen leaves turning to powder around us.
I split a squash & roast it with butter and sage,
and in winter we dig the turnips from the root cellar.
With each slice my tongue catches
on my teeth. I boil potatoes pocked & latticed
after I cut their black eyes out. You're a scarecrow
in an argyle sweater, all elbows & moth holes.
I try to dream the harvest back but instead see only
snow that clogs the paths to market,
the rabbits you shoot & skin in the fields.
At night we seashell in our separate frozen beds
& through the snow bright days, on the lean meat
of your care for me, I starve.
©
is the author of Double Jinx: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2015), winner of the 2014 National Poetry Series. Her poems have most recently appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, 32 Poems, and Smartish Pace. She is a doctoral candidate in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also earned her MFA in poetry.
We’ve published three more poems by Reddy: “Before & After, Botched,” “We Won't Make it to the Talkies,” and “Come Fetch.”
