When the boys carry its cold
body home in a shoebox, don’t think
of the crescent moon snagged
like a fish hook in the pine boughs,
fruit flies drowning in vinegar,
the chicken’s egg Maria found
smashed in the straw. Don’t think
of the apples you thinned
from the branch that morning
just as bud became body—
apples no bigger than a marble,
skin dark with worms and disease—
how you pinched each one
like the tip of a candle, dropped it
into a bucket for boiling. Just listen
as the boys tell you how they found it,
still early enough to see the stars,
the vapor of their breath, the frost
not yet burned from the grass.
They’ll tell you how the mother
had torn the sac open with her teeth,
how she licked its body clean.
Thanks to Mid-American Review, where this poem first appeared.
Sarah Burke 