After a teen runs into me. After, without words,
the Gardening attendant scoops up shards
of adobe blown aisle-wide. After she smiles
in a double-shift way and offers the pot and pieces
for free. When I brush on coats of Elmer’s Glue,
I am with you again in Auburn, AL.
It is the year Toomer’s two oaks
succumb to poison, that April crowds
gather at last to gauze those old trees
in paper celebration, sour spools.
Your grip is perfect before the first toss:
dimples don’t form on whatever you touch—
ginger fingers, cuticles trimmed.
And that after the Monday you texted
it froze I brought in the plants
your castle got missed don’t be angry
Did I reply? Is it better this way?
or Our fairies now bristle like emerald snow bees?
Near Toomer’s you watch a low branch sway,
asking to no one what does it mean? Bronze
braid of hair long down your back. I mouth it
but don’t say you’re no fairy queen and find myself
here, with this clerk, kneeling. On the floor
slack dirt, seed and debris.
David Antonio Moody
David Antonio Moody writes out of Tallahassee, FL where he pursues a PhD
in poetry at Florida State University. Former poetry editor for Saw Palm
and Juked, David is production editor of Cortland Review and Southeast
Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sweet, Eleven Eleven,
22 Magazine, Spillway, and Artful Dodge. When not camping, researching
Ukranian violinists, or lecturing on Carthusian manuscripts, he spends time
in his hometown, eating in Florida oldest diner and watching the local river
flow north.
Photo: Sherstin Schwarts, "Icy Pearls"
Website: www.etsy.com/shop/TinyDelicateworld
Gingerbread House Lit Mag 