Practice for Living
Bo Schwabacher
A poet who loves peaches, melons, and possibly hunger writes
me back: a few words. What’s sweeter is that a baby calls
and a mother comes in the early light. Children giving names
to the wild plum bark, to their ghosts, “You can’t do anything,”
the child says. Blurry eyes mean “a deep longing to go home,
yet we're not sure what home means.” Google says so.
A friend surprises me with dark chocolate cherries, a poet
shows me her dog in a small fluffy cloud, therefore time
isn’t what we think. Almost lifting from the body, a woman’s soft
brown hair is flying through the woods, we talk of cures and a yellow
bird. Falling into me is the taste of lime, a laugh I love. We all want
just a little more time in the presence of what is not yet known,
closer to those who have the hunger, some call it that,
for the sound that is us—the place. her room. our table.
Bo Schwabacher is an adoptee from South Korea. Her poems have appeared in CutBank, Radar, Redivider, the Offing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.