Ottoman

Blue car wasn’t solid
blue anymore. Matte metal, rust
bottom up, like it grew

out of the grass. Ticks,
they warned. But
they never followed me.

What was in that abandoned car
is buried now, with
candy lands and sprite villages

that my kidself transported to
on rainy days. On rainy days now
I don’t know what to do

with my hands. I agitate
on the blue chair, feet on the ottoman.
There is much to do.

***

Flowers in the Graveyard

Rot can’t be undone.
Just look at the pumpkins
on the Christmas porch
cushioned in snow.
Flowers from the graveyard
mark years.

Each day we rot.
We live in an exhilarating
age of rot. Roots loose
from a bedrock toxic
with short-sighted ventures.
Skin whithers.

In our state of rot,
grass looks solemn
at its greenest.
Unnavigable wilderness
other side of sadness
has potential.

Each day we rot
sweeping up dead skin
polishing incisors.
Routine theater
worth every pumpkin
on the vine.

***

Sara Sowers-Wills teaches linguistics and writing at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where she writes and pursues research in cognitive linguistics. Her poems have appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Thunderbird Review, Sonic Boom, Pleiades, Interim, and Denver Quarterly. She enjoys the explosive sunrises and extreme cold in Duluth, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.