Sky slips a catalogue of stars into mailboxes
all over your river town. Midnight, and Pleiades play
their old game. A train whistles its way.
Blackbirds ride ditch asters that hallow the deer
slipping out of her dun coat in the grass,
turning back its unhemmed red edge to the dark.
Porch lights cast a net where the river makes its bend,
and from there your little town glistens
like a cocktail dress flung across the bed
burning itself out against shelterbelt black.
— Lori Brack
The velvet bump
of tadpoles against my
palm, hundreds
of fat, black bodies
wiggling in the galvanized
tub, bodies my brother
planned to make bait or money.
My sister and I plotted
to release them,
half-legged and stubby tailed.
When we picked up the tub
between us, they sloshed
and plopped on the patio
like ripe cherries.
My brother sent
the bait man’s three dollars
away with a comic book
coupon and we teased him
when the thick envelope
arrived marked Joe Weider,
Trainer of Champions.
All that summer my brother
left his t-shirt on
to hide his belly.
My son’s sharp shoulder
blades stick out like wings.
We go to find tadpoles.
I want to show him how
their comet shapes sprout
legs and front arms and
stand-up eyeballs.
We kneel beside the sandpit,
barely a ripple in the water,
only carp, and a throaty
vibration from a clutch
of frogs.
— Lori Brack
Lori Brack’s work has appeared in The Packingtown Review, North American Review, Rosebud, and other journals. Her first chapbook, a poetic script for a work of performance art in collaboration with artist Ernesto Pujol, A Fine Place to See the Sky, was published in 2010.
When I say zinnias do you see them,
Mexico colors, in high Kansas summer
behind the red brick garage? Is your mother
freckling in the sun, holding the green
garden hose gushing water into the bed,
making creamy mud shine like icing?
Do the monarchs light and flutter
from frilled bloom to bloom?
And can you lift them as your father
taught between your first grade fingers,
set one on each shoulder, and
walk into the house wearing wings?
All that summer and deep
into September, will you visit zinnias
hunting for plundered flight?
— Lori Brack
Lori Brack’s work has appeared in The Packingtown Review, North American Review, Rosebud, and other journals. Her first chapbook, a poetic script for a work of performance art in collaboration with artist Ernesto Pujol, A Fine Place to See the Sky, was published in 2010.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 