Eve

Poetry

Jul 13

Dusk is plush in its last strut.   And the family must run for its life.

The combs have been sucked of the last bits of summer. The mother slows, the pain will not let her.

Cattails brush their hair one hundred times before the river.   The pain grows like a field to flower.

The wind recites dates, the names of saints.   She runs behind the vanishing back of her daughter.

What is the difference between a daughter and mother? One looks ahead and one over her shoulder.

What is the mother outside of her love for the daughter? She runs until they can no longer see

one another. Mother, I grew old in my deciding—    and now it’s dusk.

The cattails have rusted shut. Daughter, I must leave my dream of you behind.

Poetry

Stacy Gnall

Stacy Gnall is the author of the poetry collections Dogged (winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry from The University of Massachusetts Press) and Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books). Her work has appeared in a number of journals, most recently Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, Bennington Review, and New American Writing. Gnall holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California, and is also a graduate of the University of Alabama’s MFA program in Creative Writing and Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she is currently Poet-in-Residence at the University of Detroit Mercy.

Eve

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