I Have Webbed Toes
I was told by a potter that clay has a memory;
elements hold it in place.
If you try to reshape it, it remembers
it was once different, and will try to return to that state.
My genetics seem to come from the desert.
I have river-beds of veins that rise under thin skin,
a receding hairline, eyes the color of rattlesnakes.
My memories are mostly droughts of joy
that formed worry lines on my forehead, sides of my mouth.
From too much exposure, my skin has mottled
like an egg of the cactus wren.
But the mirages that keep appearing tell of another story.
I see her up ahead, the way she was from the very beginning.
I struggle to remember her, who formed her.
She has webbed toes. She once swam
in the land of milk and honey in the rain-filled streams.
Ouija Board
Inside a dumpster, I spotted the long forgotten game
forbidden by my mother
that I secretly played at a friend’s home.
I leaned far in to retrieve the board
on which we placed our questions while shrouded in the dark,
huddled, waiting for the pull of our hands by candlelight,
feeling for the wonder-filled naming of things,
an insightful thunder-crack, the fear-dropping answer to a prayer,
someone being claimed even when they were not looking,
a whisper, a silent reassurance, the answer spelled out.
I took it home, placed it prominently on a table.
I must resurrect the will, the courage,
the art of the question I possessed in my youth,
the living out of the answers.
Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). Her poems have been published in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way, Bramble, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Piglet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Of Rust and GlassPoetica Review, Solitary Plover, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Poet Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Whispers and Echoes, Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and Your Daily Poem. She writes a poem a day. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin. You can find her on Facebook here.
Sparks of Calliope 