Poetry by Laura Ann Reed
By Laura Ann Reed
Those days when his body bloated,
water and food refused.
When I was young, not knowing
how a sun falls and my mother, distracted
by her life’s deletions:
her polio-stricken limbs, the four miscarriages,
the pair of living infants whose breath
turned to air.
Because I’m allowed to see him prior
to the needle’s grace, I memorize
the fluorescent light’s nimbus
above the cage where his distended
form trembles. Pressed against the finger
I wedge between the wires
his nose is dry, burning.
Low in his throat his heart’s purr rattles,
a broken motor.
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Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet
at the University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership
development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States
Environmental Protection Agency. Her work
has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada
and Britain. She is the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown, (Sungold Editions, 2023). Laura and her husband
live in the Pacific Northwest.