Not All Our Excuses Come to Light

by Lois Marie Harrod

Yes, I remember the day that grandma
broke her hip, they blamed your toys,
but you were three, and I can’t recall

the woman with red fingernails who still
invades your dreams, so sometimes you
seem as far from me as that young woman

who let her children drift into the lake,
I suppose she will be convicted of murder
while the rich man will fit his fist through

the needle’s eye. Is this salvation
or just another battered face?
Which can you afford to pitch?

If we dropped stones down the same well,
I would listen to the random patter
and you’d remember how each fragment

bruised your ear. I call you again and leave
another message. You do not hear. This is
the justification of what we cannot say.


Copyright 2015, Lois Marie Harrod

Lois Marie Harrod’s  13th and 14th poetry collections appeared in 2013: Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Word Tech: Cherry Grove) and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press).  Other collections include: The Only Is (2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest winner), Brief Term, poems about teachers and teaching (Black Buzzard Press, 2011), and Cosmogony (2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook Contest Winner).  She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. loismarieharrod.org


 

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