Two Poems by Laura Ann Reed

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.