Philip Kobylarz, The End of the Country, Photograph
Footnotes for the Frost Moon
Bluejay works the emaciated Egon Schiele head of a sunflower.
Its tail feathers (lead white sharpening the trick of cerulean)
call to mind a vintage dress brightly tailored to set off an ample bosom.
Thin puddles freeze brown.
Deeper puddles begin their freezing to blackness.
Eight frozen red apples hang conspicuously redemptive
over rotting fence posts.
Mother lies still. Doctor uses a Sharpie to mark an X on the bread dough
coating the tired partridge-like lungs.
Winterberries persist in ditches. Even come winter,
the world readily fills with the estrogen of others.
Mother is slipping from the world.
She is holding my hand.
___________
Erin Wilson