Fresh Graves

Fireflies blazed the fields,
I thought those bugs would burn
like Momma's hands.

Her figure loomed in
the backyard,
a young woman's body
traded for the lumps of
eleven kids,
sheets whipping around her,
stinging like the gin arms of
her second man.

Squinting made the white nag
a ghost wandering around
a forgotten family graveyard;
the ghosts indoors were real,
the graves fresh.

by Susan Paige Shoemaker

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