The void reshuffles the deck, your card from a sister life.
Poet, explain who sends these postcards from a sister-life?
Her fingernails leave quarter moons: night tears from its corners—
Even the landscape reassembles in a sister-life.
During fits of sleep, they leave you the keys of those vacant rooms,
Which once lined the forked boulevards of a sister-life.
The heron’s struggle ends. Please, forward its signature song
To this address—and the next—hardening into a sister-life.
The morning splinters from night, the posts cast crocked shadows—
It waits: the terrible elusive shard from a sister-life.
Once, I heard you say my name, “ava” building into orgasm—
I proclaim my namesake and guard of a sister-life.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 20, Issue 1.
Ava C. Cipri is a poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of Disability Literature & Art, and teaches writing at Duquesne University. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her first chapbook, Queen of Swords, was published by dancing girl press (2018). Her second chapbook, Leaving The Burdened Ground, is forthcoming through Stranded Oak Press (Spring 2018). She resides at: www.avaccipri.com and tweets at @AvaCCipri
See all items about Ava C. Cipri