ANGELA WILLIAMSON EMMERT

How Every Day I Fed You
(during those days of horror)
and Still You Did Not Love Me

How I fed you every day through the worst
winter we could remember when we heard
wolves that cried to a white quartz moon
and the night was so cold it became us
and we were the cold and were swept up
to the sky like spirits and would have
surely died but we were not hungry
and that was what held us to earth.

How we brought the chickens to live
in the house and dug in the snow to feed
them and I begged them to lay oh please
lay oh please lay and the soft letting go
when you ate one - how the eggs when
they came felt like love.

How in the spring when the light spoke of
living and the earth spoke of living and we
spoke of living you carried supplies
to survivors who opened their doors
with their children half-starved and
you were the light and the green
of your coat was the color of hope
and was it for this that you left me?

And now what you said still clings to my skin
and the earth will not feed me and the sky
will not have me and the light will not
touch me and I will know hunger
without you






Angela Williamson Emmert lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and sons. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Star*Line.



Boxcar Poetry Review - ISSN 1931-1761