||
My body a ghost of an outline, behind empty glass,
reverberates. I watch two white women in spandex stand
in my lawn. A young boy flips a ball in his hands, mouths
mother & then fucker, sailing the ball into my window. Two
women continue to talk. I open my door, Hey, can I
help you? falls from my jaws, breath to a weathered Dandelion
head, I thought I heard something (& my mind questions neighborly
& whiteness in one synaptic fire) hit my window. One white mother
looks me up & down. No, she squints with her eyes, turns
her head, a swivel to wipe my form. Trampoline hinges
spring & spring from the neighbor’s yard—screams
of children on woven polypropylene canvas, suspended
dove-like above the darkness of mat: a lamb’s unknown
bleat before shear of season or before slaughter to eat.
Felicia Zamora
Felicia Zamora is the author of six poetry collections including I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Her poems appear in Boston Review, Guernica, Orion, The Nation, and others. She is an associate professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and poetry editor for Colorado Review.
