in the South, a body might do that, or
it makes a body feel some type of way.
Here rounding at the knees to support
the body as it carries my keepings
up the hill; wrists in coats as a body
walks around the city; picked a hair
from my shoulder, but it wasn’t my hair.
A body can confide. Fortune carries
sometimes in the body like a coin kept
in the stomach: when you pull a tooth
from a body, drive it in an apple tree
for good luck. It is bad luck for a body
to find an open safety pin; good
to find a button—if
a body keeps it. Don’t mend
a garment while it’s worn. A body
looms like a tree dressed in winter
kudzu: stems ashbrown bodies
as the leaves die back in the cold,
stems trailing where in summer
they’d grown as much as a foot in a day:
stems like hair from a ghost body.
Kudzu can grow on a body.
When the rain is far off
over them, the jagged Cascades
round like the backs
of bodies in prayer. It’s bad luck
to watch a body out of sight.
See more poems from Issue 17.2 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.
