All over my city, on streets named for trees 
and presidents, lawns have come back, dotted 
with violets and slashed with red tulips' swords.

Days when I knew I'd die, I wanted 
to stretch face down on lawns like these, taste 
of green blades in my mouth, stained ankles

twisting. A Saturday father might 
find a soft bump in the leaves beneath his rake tines; 
mealy bone he sprinkled to the lilies might be mine.

Days when I knew the widths and lengths 
of every stray feather, every dead yardbird's claw, 
the full perimeter of fear, would he have sniffed

the air and fenced me out? Or cranked on the sprinklers 
and wrapped a sweet twine of myrtle around my throat, 
then let the fat robins rain down. 

Pamela Gemin's first book, Vendettas, Charms, and Prayers, is due September 15 from New Rivers Press. She is also co-editor of the anthology Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation, forthcoming from University of Iowa Press.

Contents

 Pamela

 Gemin