One Poem from April Michelle Bratten

The Late Mourn


Names, like sugar cubes, were of little importance then,
melting in the sweet,
and flowing as a fountain from the corner of my mouth.

This was how, draining steadily, I came to water the blooms--
pop, popping in!
Bones, stem, and peeling skin.

A clay pot, I was, for her suffering,
holding, holding, her frightened ash.

O, if I was a stone, inanimate and obscene,
I stood so without a rage,
for I feared not the drifting turn of her hands,
plucking, petals, petals.

But her sobs,
they became the train that broke my silence,
her heart, her railroad, thrumming to the echo
of the late mourn coming to keep.

We brought her the garden, planted her deep inside,
and stood quietly while the hands bent beneath the soil.

She is the garden, checkered with lilies, light,
and this red, red, room.


April Michelle Bratten is a student of poetry and literature at Minot State University in Minot, North Dakota. She has been published in such journals as BluePrintReview, Prick of the Spindle, Flutter, and Thick With Conviction. April currently co-edits the online literary journal Up the Staircase.




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