Powdered Bone Strengthens the Ware and Whitens It

By Sandra Yee

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……………………..The garden abandoned, soil hardened
…………..to brick, the seasons of my mother’s hearted cabbage
blown by full and quick as a song.

……………………..Once she fed me, and once I was young
…………..enough to be fed. My bowl now waits
blank as a page, porcelain made of bone ash

……………………..and brittle teeth. Here memory I pull along,
…………..red slatted wagon I can’t cut loose.
But where else is there to look?  Bodies gone

……………………..cold, my hands even colder, the cursive
…………..of her hair on the pillow a fortune
I can’t decipher. Some people glide toward their fates

……………………..like a bride through a bloomed trellis.

I press my lips to their trains.

– Sandra Yee