Angela Narciso Torres

THIS GRIEF A STONE BAKED INTO PARCHED EARTH

This grief a stone baked into parched earth.
It rains for days. The clay will not relent.  
This grief like so many griefs yet like no other
as dusk purples the sky with one palette
then paints the hills and plains another.
We grow old. With aches in our bones, faces
mapping where we smiled or scowled too much. 
This was the year I did both or neither. And time 
was water filling a stranded boat. The dog’s leg 
will heal or not, the rose encumbered with slugs
bloom or not bloom, the cat—hiss or purr.
Night comes down with her tattered skirt.
The son will wake, his face a knot or star. 
Things are always and never what they are.

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry), To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, and Cortland Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she resides in Southern California.