Sleepy child, what are you sewing? Where do you imagine you will wear it?
Daylight falls like yards of satin in your lap. When Mother wraps her arms
around you, your shoulders don’t begin where she expects—do you enjoy
this, that it takes a moment to find you? It is winter and the fields are
numb. Then it’s spring and poppies flaunt their blood-soaked composure.
For months, you feel the tug of hunger, like a balloon tied to your wrist.
The sky asks nothing. Let your hand float up, and answer.
3 The Paris-American
Chloe Honum’s poems have appeared in TheParis Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Orion, Memorious, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, an Isabella Gardner Residency Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, and a Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is currently the Writer in Residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. Find her online at www.chloehonum.com.
