“The Great Conjunction” © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

She died during the pandemic

The vulgar pigeons and sad nightingales did not remind me of her
only the earthquake. Only the surgery in Mineral, Virginia. The

perjury of her last day. God’s opening fresh ground. Performs an
operation that creeps through her body. The tremors form varicose

veins. There were women only whispering to women behind the flying
buttress of a church fan. The utter dark men getting drunk. Only boys

watch their elders on the back road of Camden, traveling I-95, bypass
D.C. to NYC. Tried to make peace, but she is in recess. As I look from the

window to the river, as it transforms into seltzer. It renders human to
spirit. Now, I can only remember the bag of peaches, she reaches from

the side of the road. Can only hang onto the taste of ten years ago. She is as
singular as umbilical to my origin. Can feel her. Can’t see her. Her voice

still answers the phone, atone as she ascends. Will never leave my thoughts.
Only a bust on Greyhound. Her voice in another state.

 

Robert Gibbons is a Pushcart nominated poet living in Brooklyn. His first collection, Close to the Tree was published by Three Rooms Press. His chapbook, Flight was published by Poets wear Prada in 2019.

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well as a school psychologist. Her images have been published in Ibbetson Street Press, The Somerville Times, and Oddball Magazine.