After
It was a season of funerals.
Shadow displaced daylight and I walked
around worried about who would be
next to step barefoot into darkness.
Where had they gone? Would they have to live
in a windowless room, with ground for
their sky, the drapery frozen, kitchen
covered in leaves? Would snow explode on
their black tongues? Problems and promises
littered the pavement like dark sputum,
the fruit of the tubercular, ours
to pick up or sweep away. We, still
in the middle of our red night; they,
zipping into cooler wind. I was
surprised by the rain in the building,
streaming white and hard under this roof.
Terry Wolverton is the author of eleven books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, including Embers, a novel in poems, and Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir. Her most recent title is RUIN PORN, a collection of poems. She is the founder of Writers at Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and affiliate faculty in the MFA Writing Program of Antioch University Los Angeles.