local_library What to Honor

by Laura Cherry

Published in Issue No. 275 ~ April, 2020

The spring-loaded kitten with stick-thistle paws

and the fourteen-year-old cat with the stalled-motor purr.

 

The ponytailed runner in spandex and camelback

and the creaky jogger with Ace-bandaged knees.

 

The magnificent tree with the thirty-foot branchspan

and the tree pruned in an L-shape for telephone wires.

 

The whistling hotshot in pegged pants and Bluetooth

and the grave gentleman with his uniform and pushbroom.

 

The beauty in the yearbook, all eyes, teeth, and pearls

and the beauty in the knitted skullcap and hospital bed.

 

This world of dark amazement, never newborn,

never broken quite beyond renewal.

account_box More About

Laura Cherry is the author of the collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books) and the chapbooks Two White Beds (Minerva Rising) and What We Planted (Providence Athenaeum). She co-edited the anthology Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press) with Robert Hartwell Fiske, and her work has been published in journals including Antiphon, Ekphrastic Review, Los Angeles Review, Cider Press Review, and Hartskill Review. She earned an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She works as a technical writer and lives near Boston with her son and their cats.