Archive
Cracks
In the week that winter
yields to spring, the last snow seeps
into the saggy-doored garage, between wide foundation gaps,
through unevenly settled concrete plates, mixing there
with leaves left by late November:
fall sediment that dries, shrinks, then swells and steeps
as thaw replaces freeze, requiring lapsed
rituals of broom and rake, soap and wipe. I clear
a path to reach my sleeping bike;
extract a stack of dingy plastic chairs, once white;
excavate the dog’s ripe backyard waste,
look for crocus, daffodil, lilac
that shoot up and open in a blink; debate whether we ought
to risk geraniums yet; watch for signs of the buried-last-fall cat, heaved back.
by Wendy Vardaman
Exoskeletons
Desert magician, darkling
beetle — imagine
if you woke
to find your lost twin lying
empty alongside
you in bed —
dead. Or if in the middle
of, at work, import-
ant drivel,
you came unfastened. Do you
step with care or kick
the useless
you aside, pretend you do
not see it lying
there? Or, con-
sider, lost in a roman-
tic declaration,
the likely
embarrassment when a bone-
splitting crack is heard.
The shell falls
away revealing nothing
over and over,
but itself.
by Wendy Vardaman
qarrtsiluni 