In
a Difficult Hour
At four, she longs to fly.
In a dream, she learns the technique—
so ridiculously simple she laughs
in her sleep. As she lifts above
the houses on her street, she falls in love
with wings.
In the morning when she wakes
she slides off the bed, eager
to repeat those easy steps:
Push off with toes. Raise arms
to shoulder height. Take a breath.
Think, flight.
Something’s wrong. Perhaps it’s better
done outside? Yet, even on the lawn
with puffy clouds cheering overhead
it doesn’t work.
She won’t eat her toast
and scrambled eggs, won’t go
to nursery school. She mopes
by the window in her room,
ignores her dolls.
When her mother asks,
she only says, Watching birds.
In a Long, Shuddering
Quiet
At five, I watch petrified
as a huge German Shepherd
saunters through an open door
and charges toward the cardboard box
where my new kittens swallow
mother’s milk.
I stamp my feet, clench my fists,
burn to strangle him. But I’m frightened
by his size and only shout, Bad dog!
When he slinks away I race to the box
to look inside. Six tiny severed
heads
float in a lake of crimson ooze.
The room spins and blurs.
I find myself curled on the rug,
trying to breathe, trying
not to see those pointed teeth
dripping kitten blood.
Laura Ann Reed received a dual BA in French/Comparative Literature
from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently completed
Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing Arts, and Psychology. She was a
dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to assuming the role of Leadership
Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. She and her husband now reside in western Washington.
Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude
and Hope, and has appeared or is forthcoming in MacQueen’s Quinterly,
The Ekphrastic Review, and Willawaw, among other journals.
Wow! and Wow! again.
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