A Scattering

Orange light leaks from the pearl blue sky.
Forgive me Lord, I am thinking
of summer from another era.
Forgive me Lord, I want to be okay again,
and not carry the thousand stone
worthy weight of my penance.
And I remember a farmhouse with pink lilacs
on the thick bluish fields. Golden balloons
tied to the crabapple blossom trees.
I was alone, yet came for my birthday cake
of ruffled yellow scotch frosting.
I remember what it was before the mark
of wandering for not giving the best of my crop
from the lush and wet soil,
and for killing what was beautiful beside me,
what I was supposed to be a keeper of.
I remember that year I was alone.
But I remember also being taken in.
My hands not sore. My heart
not so wrecked for building a city
for the banished wondrous dream,
unreachable thing. This after being let go
from the Lord. This after the leaving.

 

Michelle Askin’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Off the Coast, Pif Magazine, Fogged Clarity, and elsewhere.

Jury S. Judge is an internationally published artist, writer, poet, and cartoonist. Her “Astronomy Comedy” cartoons are published in Lowell Observatory’s quarterly publication, The Lowell Observer. She has been interviewed on the television news program, ‘NAZ Today’ for her work as a political cartoonist. Her artwork has been widely featured in over one hundred and twenty five literary magazines such as, Blue Mesa Review, The Tishman Review, Blue Moon Review, and The Ignatian Literary Journal. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 2014.