From Born
Fritz Ward
After the first deep freeze,
the elm leaves seal themselves
beneath the puddles:
each leaf blackened red
like a wound
we step carefully over.
She will unstitch you,
our mothers say.
The days pass: ocean,
ocean, accident.
Here a cave of prehistoric
fear, there a nest of teeth.
When you won’t sleep,
I lay you down on the floor
and kneel at the altar
of you altering me.
Fritz Ward is the author of Tsunami Diorama (The Word Works, 2017) and the chapbook Doppelganged (Blue Hour Press, 2011). His poetry has appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He works at Swarthmore College and lives just outside of Philadelphia.
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