TR Brady
graveyard in winter
no, winter. whittle first the atmosphere, the under
current of snow & mirrors of ice. leave my red
cheeks & red hands for last. the frost wants
my tongue to sleep between the rests in this plot,
the agricultural gutter. of land I can say this:
the ground is hard with cold, my figure
is planted in the frozen swale before the gate, the dead
are the only buried that won’t rise come spring,
so what is to fear of a snowy field? a family
grave I was made to visit as a child? my father,
the bearer of every uncle’s coffin? the accident
of snow is that when it melts, I’m left
standing where I was. a little stasis ache.
TR Brady is a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Diagram, Poetry Northwest, Passages North, and The Journal. Originally from the Arkansas Delta, she currently lives in Iowa City with her partner.