I. Forest Blues
The grab of trees is nothing.
I’m hip to their enchantments,
their impenetrable leavings; they ought
to be less obvious when calling the winds
for a ride. Their branches out them every time.
There is always one struggling to smother a laugh,
always a pair curving like arms, always a skeletal
beckoning, a threat of tearing and ultimate capture.
I roll my eyes and barely glance their way.
You’d think by now they’d know
I’ll never lose my stride.
(You’d think they’d shift allegiances and
choose the better side.)
II. Scones with Dinah on the Riverbank
Ok, Girls, here’s the scoop.
Snouts and muzzles aren’t tricks of the light.
There are fangs aplenty
glinting through the cattails
as you spread your checkered cloth
upon the dewy sedge
and invite your cat to tea.
III. Through the Woods
Swing the basket in extravagant loop de loops,
piecrusts cracking and jam jars bruising the fruit.
The old girl never expected compliance.
She whooped it up and snapped
her lacy garters in her youth.
She takes in the burrs and seedpods
on the lusty scapegrace cape and
hungers for the wolf.
Kate Falvey’s work has been published in many journals (including previous issues of DO) and anthologies; in a full-length collection, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and in two chapbooks, What the Sea Washes Up (Dancing Girl Press) and Morning Constitutional in Sunhat and Bolero (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). She co-founded (with Monique Ferrell) and for ten years edited the 2 Bridges Review, published through City Tech (City University of New York) where she teaches, and is an associate editor for the Bellevue Literary Review.