Three Poems

Shell Candy as Misplaced Woman

say you are the seashell of a roudoudou,

hot fruity syrup molding to your curve

like a dress you hate to wear.

say you look beautiful but feel hollow,

left to help harden what lies on your

growth, confused with the taste

of caramel or fresh crushed strawberries.

say you just wait for the mouth’s maneuver

like a body-starved priest holding a brittle eucharist,

hot sugary liquid scalding doctrines molded

into colors you can’t see without eyes.

say you’ve had enough of containment,

how it dulls the feel of any mouth on your inner lip.

you are what we all try to avoid.

**Sparked by a Two Sylvias Prompt during NaPoMo 2018.

If your sons had been twins

they’d share your muffled humming-mother
language, both bodies soothed in winter.

But born in different months and years,
arms undone from the other’s, tragedy begins.

The night’s rocks lost to the river, younger
brother flails about the other’s tongue,

his guns. Older brother lies, tries to bury clouds,
digs a hole so dark, his good memory lost

in the ground. Two sons daunted, they play
with fog’s grief. Your mother-roused air

strips your lullaby: hinged throat, parched
marrow. As men they wonder what unmatched

skin-taut thread darned their introductions, ask
if brotherhood divides, will it surge toward pile-up,

every moving piece sorted before outcome?

White Herons

*White Herons – previously published in a now defunct journal.

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Theresa Senato Edwards has published two full-length poetry books, one, with painter Lori Schreiner, which won The Tacenda Literary Award for Best Book, and two chapbooks. Her first chapbook, The Music of Hands, was published in a revised second print edition by Seven CirclePress. Poems from her newest manuscript, “Fragments of Wing Bones,” can be found in Stirring, Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, Thrush, Diode, Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, Dialogist, SWWIM, Whale Road Review, Verse Daily, The Shore Poetry, PANK, and other fine journals.  Edwards was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, received creative writing residencies from Drop Forge & Tool and Craigardan, is a poetry editor for The American Poetry Journal and poetry mentor for the 2020 COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective. Her website: https://theresasenatoedwards.wixsite.com/tsenatoedwards.  Her favorite word: avant-garde.