on divorce II
And they woke to chicken bones scattered across the lawn
and the children practicing divination
And they were on different continents, having built
on a fault line during the time of the gradual nightly drift
And it was a season of dragon scales and broken dolls
The pet rabbit in pieces on the neighbor’s hill
should have warned them all of the coming fire
He opened a letter from no one and cried
She smiled yellow through the collected pictures on the piano
The child swallowed pepper from the dinner
table shaker and knew good and evil
The littlest one crawled into the bread cabinet
and ate an entire loaf before anyone found her
The garden yielded bushels of lettuce with perfect spider eggs
like pearls in the palm of each leaf
At night, the darkness forced itself through the one corner
of the house at which the angels didn’t stand,
and the children shivered at the sight
***
Read more of Leanne Drapeau’s poetry, including “on divorce I.”
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