in a jeweled box
when my mother’s bedroom
vanity
In Saratoga Springs, New York, there was a well-known glassblower named Gary Zack.
His shop faced onto an alley and the doors stood wide open whenever he was working in
front of the furnaces. It was a revelation to watch him turn a white-hot globule of
molten glass into a delicate pink Azalea.
was emptied—bottles, brushes
her vials, puffs and powder
in the morning
He kept an old wheelbarrow outside the shop in which he deposited works that for him
had somehow failed. Above the wheelbarrow, a sign read: “Free, but take only one.”
we walked all in yellow
rain gear dripping
I took a red poppy
broken
moving to France
