Mapping the Damage​

Issue 18

At dusk, you step from the boat
into a frenzy of snow, into this light
of nightfall that holds your dead.
Around you, voices muffled with cold
speaking in a dozen tongues.  
Against the darkening sky, a line of birds
recalling da Vinci’s sketch of a wing--
the reverent compression of meaning
like the maternal hand stirring
a pot on the stove.
 
You were told how the fingers of flame
grasped at the walls of the house
your mother lived in alone,
how the windows imploded, bits of glass
glittering in the ashes, the slow smoke
unravelling itself from bone.
 
Leaning into a wind thickened with snow
you dream of being erased like the pines. 
Instead, you buy an orange grove
and admire the tenacity
of spiders in the shadows between the trees.
 
 If anyone asks, you’ll say this is what happens
to someone born into the crosshairs of force,                      
river of blood under a net of flies.                                                                                                      
You’ll pretend you’ve learned how to move
through a world not at war                                            
with those like you
to whom God has given salt to heal wounds.

                — after Chelsea Dingman

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LAURA ANN REED is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in twelve anthologies including Poetry of Presence (Grayson Books, 2023) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023).

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