Stormy, and: Some Days I Would Place

Abstract

Stormy, and: Some Days I Would Place M. L. Brown (bio) Stormy There are no clear instructions for waving goodbye to the woman in red flannel. Mother. Old spine. She claws herself upright, stands against the crumbling door jamb, dinosaur bird waving back at me. There are no instructions for when the parent says no except for the heart to carapace, wait her out through another snow, let the forms for Maple Grove pulse with ink, the signature line wash white with storm. I no longer wonder if a goodbye is the last, ask instead how a body can last so long. Some Days I Would Place the caterwauls of children, the yapping of dogs into a darkening thicket— [End Page 162] the chain saw’s racket, the mockingbird’s rant into damp sand— revelers, the newly- weds next door into an old jam jar, no holes for air. [End Page 163] M. L. Brown M. L. Brown is the author of Drought, winner of the Claudia Emerson Poetry Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Blue Lyra Review, and PoemMemoirStory. When not writing poetry, Brown raises funds for a nonprofit women’s health care organization. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press