Matinee
On the count of her hand’s baton,
the venetian blinds rise. Outside
the weeping willows curtsy. I tell her
the blue flowers of the chaste tree she loves
make her medicine. “Really?” she says.
Everything is a miracle, including
the pink crepe myrtle she sees as if
for the first time. She doesn’t remember
planting it there, but I can still see her
dragging the sapling across the lawn
where the birds still picnic. When they shoot up
into the sunlight like arrows dripping
purple feathers, she applauds, and asks,
“When’s the next show?”
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Most recently her writing has appeared in Does It Have Pockets? Switch, Gone Lawn, Your Impossible Voice, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.
Amethyst Review 