Meadow St. in foreclosure;
the whole block reclassified as flood plain.
The Sinque’s, Sam and Gladys’s old place,
Don Cornell’s summerhouse, what’s left of Ruby’s cottage,
all waiting in weeds thigh-high;
Then signs appear.
Mail piles;
garbage cans loll in driveways.
Meanwhile, strays have arrived,
following the break-ins
that stripped copper piping out.
Maybe a bulldozer will come, maybe not.
My mother’s house still stands,
checked on from time to time.
When no one claimed Mrs. Conklin, next door,
her ashes were delivered to the front steps.
See the urn, propping
the storm door ajar.
What does emptiness teach an empty hand?
In a pink back bedroom,
a rocking horse left behind.
Its carousel smile, bright eye
lashed to life—
its bitted smile says save, steal
away in gold-dusted sprint—
No unicorn heister, no more
I have no more children.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 2.
Sharon Kennedy-Nolle’s chapbook Black Wick: Selected Elegies was published by Variant Literature Press spring 2022. Her poetry has also appeared or is upcoming in Potomac Review, Cape Rock, Sanskrit, Vox Poetica, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Chicago Quarterly Review, MacGuffin, The Midwest Quarterly, and Evening Street Review, among others. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 by Boomerlit Magazine, and she won the 2021 New Ohio Review Contest for poetry. A graduate of Vassar College, Kennedy-Nolle holds an MFA and doctoral degree from the University of Iowa.
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