Friday Original Poem

Three

When I say the word “orphan”

The word sits on my tongue like mold

One mother a mystery, lost to cancer, to mistakes, to men who used her

Leavings to a landfill turned to decay

Granny’s acrid breathing labors two years later

And a young woman chooses three faces from a courthouse photo.

In America, a mad host insists the two oldest are hers

They are plucked bare, like pimpled and shivering chickens

Spent and anxious arrive at my door

Mingle with my three, making six

The world has been too kind to someone

Fearful of what havoc true munificence might render

Three

Knotted with reedy strands, woven through membrane, fillet and tissue

They are mine and they are a dead woman’s

A pretty thirty-one-year-old with black hair,

A granny who lived just shy of one hundred

And a cruel federal judge

A cheese-like problem (though the children hate cheese)

Filled with holes I slip between

A puzzle only prophesy can solve