red booth
review


issue 12ve
Turning Point

Day was only a glimmer
illusive as powder
on a butterfly’s wings.

Your touch, like morning sea
light as foam, the tenuous
clarity of dawn on the shore.

I can’t remember when loving you
became lingering ash, dusk on my lips
a moth’s wing gone to close to flame

the ocean nothing more then tides
and my body turned to sand.



 
Sisters

I have two daughters.

One has eyes dark 
as a cave's pool,
rich as chocolate cake.
The other's are flecked 
with auburn gold
the way a rock slicked 
with rain looks in the sun.
There are forests within them,
walnut and redwood.

This morning they asked
for fancy music and danced
on the smoke grey carpet
They danced in and out 
of each others' steps
over and under spinning arms
their small strong bodies twirling,
fingertips brushing together.

Together they could twist their arms
into vines weaving a chair strong 
enough to hold anyone they choose.
They would rock them, back and forth,
while one laughs with the arc of the swing,
and the other measures movement in the air.
 
 

- Shana Ritter
 
 
 
  

Shana is a writer and educator. She has most recently published in A Linen Weave of Bloomington Poets, and Common Ground Review. She has read her poetry on both Community Radio and National Public Radio in Bloomington, Indiana
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