1517: After Your Death | Natasha Trethewey
"After Your Death"
Natasha Trethewey
First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
rom your touch, left empty the jars
you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,
I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or-like another I plucked
and split open-being taken rom the inside:
a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, the bowl I have yet to fill.
On this day in...
2011: Weekend, no poem
2010: Weekend, no poem
2009: "Dear Man Whose Marriage I Wrecked" by Jeffrey McDaniel
2008: "Fragments of a Journey" by Sholeh Wolpé
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat/comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth/all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Natasha Trethewey
First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
rom your touch, left empty the jars
you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,
I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or-like another I plucked
and split open-being taken rom the inside:
a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, the bowl I have yet to fill.
On this day in...
2011: Weekend, no poem
2010: Weekend, no poem
2009: "Dear Man Whose Marriage I Wrecked" by Jeffrey McDaniel
2008: "Fragments of a Journey" by Sholeh Wolpé
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat/comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth/all the years of sorrow that are to come.