Beside goats with urine-soaked beards.
Despite an Amish doll my sister
pulls down from the closet shelf.
We map the Pleiades & find
little comfort from distant groupings.
At night we imagine blue dust
over everything: our bed, the mirrors.
The rowboats at dawn.
*
With little water we form a year
from our cells dusting this floor.
As eyes, so mouth. Singing,
a woman’s red hair in the drain.
Night spills nebulae over our heads.
Our hands become flocks
of fragile silver birds.
*
Faceless clocks falling
down a well.
Or a handful of crickets
hoping to follow us home.
My sister keeps the chart of faulty
lockets while boats go
about their crossings.
Go about their returns.
Laurie Saurborn Young is a poet, writer and photographer. She is the author of Carnavoria, a book of poems, published by H_NGM_N BKS. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and studied in the Program for Poets and Writers at UMASS-Amherst. She lives in Austin, Texas.