How quickly we adapt, water carving
a vein in earth. What we cannot swallow,
we haste to gild or set aflame: baby teeth,
dogwood branch, God and all his yellow
number two pencils scratching away at
our bones. I pray with a wisp of my son's
hair in my fingers. I cannot cry over
the mass shooting, not even when I touch
him. My mind is brilliant jade. I cough
jewelry onto my pillow, solder new words
for shame. When I birthed him, I lost miles
of silk—crimson tincture silent as smoke
that left only hills of salt behind.
Poetry Reed Diffuser by Dorsey Craft
Dorsey Craft is the author of A Brief History of Accidental Inventions (Texas Review Press, forthcoming 2026) and Plunder (Bauhan Publishing, 2020), which won the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, POETRY Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni. She is also the co-organizer of the Dreamboat Poetry Series in Jacksonville, FL.
