Back to Issue Twelve.

TO THE KNEES

BY ANNA ROSE WELCH

 

I lived from one small domestic transformation
to another.  At night, the pond broke to take in the rain.
In the morning, I heard you gathering your shotgun
from the dark corner of the stairs, its long length
a well-kept treasure. It might be beautiful in your hands,
the way light bursts from it like a brief tulip. To think
this is the last thing something wild sees, or doesn’t see,
before it ends. You: into the woods, and I: my morning prayers,
ending every sentence with Amen, which will always mean
May it be so, no matter how much I hate to plead.

Anna Rose Welch is a violinist and editor in Erie, PA. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2014, The Kenyon Review Online, Guernica, The Paris-American, Tupelo Quarterly, The Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and Barrow Street, among others. Her first manuscript has been shortlisted for prizes from Tupelo Press, The Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, and The OSU Press.

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