Steph Ellen Feeney
My daughter’s voice is high
and bright like sorbet,
her grandmother’s raspy
like stones, their conversation
one of constant mutual
interruption. Outside, bare branches
appear, recede, appear, recede.
Together, they chant the names:
sycamore, hornbeam, sycamore,
beech. It’s warm here, fringing
their utter twoness. My daughter laughs
a laugh she never laughs with me,
and her grandmother snorts in reply.
The children’s moon still doilies
the sky. It’s an inherited delight,
the love of that won’t-go-to-bed
day moon. I know she’ll tell her own
kid about it, if she has one, shying open
the curtains first thing in the morning,
and she’ll teach the kid the tree names,
too, and knowing this is enough,
my daughter up front expounding
how the power lines look sheet music,
her grandmother puffing raspberry-flavored vape
out the open car window, the roaring fields
in so long blasting from the radio,
wheat arcing gold, the startled rooks
like peppercorns spilled and scattering
across the periwinkle sky.
Steph Ellen Feeney was born in Louisiana, raised in Texas and now calls Suffolk home. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Gutter, Propel Magazine, Anthropocene and Ink Sweat & Tears, among others. Her debut collection, SMALL CHANGE, is out next year with Broken Sleep Books.
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