Imprints

carved, old mountains

If she looks through the trees behind her daddy’s garden, she can see Hillcreeker houses that are not brick and seem smoky. She went up there once.

communists

Her daddy tells her it’s alright to put her footprints in the fresh cold cement at the dark entrance to their fallout shelter, but she’s afraid of that, too. When they dip her baby brother, he just curls up his toes and cries.

comb marks in the deacons’ hair

They pass her the plate. Her quarters roll under the pew.

intellectuals in virgin snow

One evening after Honors Philosophy 101, she is eating Pop Rocks in the dark on a date with you and makes warm angels for the first time in the snow.

first edition, first printing

That photo she took of you is in that cabinet where she keeps all her can- dles; it starts to smell like sandalwood.

from the manual of bone marrow biopsies

While the patient is napping, take the marrow core and gently press it on the glass slide.

visiting hours

Her father says he dreamed he tilled the rows but couldn’t grow a thing, the soil was no good in his garden, as she gingerly clips the fingernails on his swollen hand.

snow prints

It seemed perfectly natural that she would call after three decades to say her father had died. She says you were the one person who convinced her there was no God. Then you have to hang up to go to your daughter’s piano recital.

shadow

The subjects in her recent photographs are still stylized and manipulated.