tied white of the moon, the sky’s reminder—
bright spotting, cloud tare. wake between midnight
& three, always the same. that april: labor hemmed in
the lower back, then her birth—eye shot, smokey-blood
& shine. she came to us; you wore nothing but
bile for hours. little-eyed nativity, crater of promises
racing to an end we can’t know through a vault salted
with stars. honeyed cough in the dark, keeping watch.
–
Dave Harrity’s writing has appeared in Verse Daily, Ninth Letter, Copper Nickel, Palimpsest, Memorious, The Los Angeles Review, Softblow, and elsewhere. His most recent book is Our Father in the Year of the Wolf (Word Farm, 2016). He is a recipient of an Emerging Artist Award and an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.