Emily Bjustrom
Freedom is a freshly scrubbed bear trap,
new and waiting.
An ugly dream,
the kindest lie.
There are abandoned houses dotted coast to coast,
hand to hand across America.
Each one festers.
The homes they had been burn.
Rolling through the mountains,
on a backroad in New Mexico- A house!
Rough sawn boards
Slouch and wait
for me,
a defiant little light,
to replant the flower beds
in salted earth.
Wait for me to grow myself
like lavender.
Delicate fat limbs,
like the heavy heads of hollyhock.
I grow to haunt a house I cannot own.
I envy the seeds the future of their roots.
My body,
a graceful sore,
the most elegant plight,
to grow sons greater than their fathers.
A future not perched on a lie,
but cradled in its own graveyard.
Saturday's Sirens 