Rose & Thorn Journal - Spring 2011
Amy Sprague is a poet, single mother, and college student living on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. Her poetry has been published in Psychic Meatloaf, Escarp, and The Survivor Chronicles. Her heart belongs to her daughter, her writing, and the blues. Visit her at Difficult Degrees.
Amy Sprague
Her Keeper
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I want to say
are you still afraid—of the night?
but she’d kill me if I knew.
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I lay awake imagining
the chemicals that flood
her brilliant mind, dousing
her down to a caged animal
that’s half-beating.
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I wait for dawn to meet her.
In our silent tongue she tells me
that there’s a price to pay
when you forge bravery;
there’s a debt that’s owed
to your soul when you
abandon it to danger.
Her dark eyes—those
faceless moons—tell me
somehow I’d been right
to hide in the dark
pretending to dream.
Difficult Degrees
How strong the wood is
how heavy the water
how fire burns you and saves you
how we can suffocate in space.
A leaf knows no direction
and it cycles.
How I slip across a plank of moods
how I gaze so far in my small mind
how I am not this sick body,
but a cycle—a circle, a painted sphere in orbit
given to touch—to feel—magnitudes.
I know no direction.
The dark, the light—two poles of a whole.
Balance: I pull you too far down
and then too high, but at such lengths
I wander beyond myself
examining the weight
the burning
the constancy
the continent
of such a life.
Drowning the Lotus
A night electric by the moon
she reaches beneath
the water, warm as a bath,
and pulls down the lily’s stem,
enough to drown
its glowing petals
beaming below the surface,
faded but brilliant.
Slip, farther down
slip, farther down
she pulls until it is a blurred
white sun.
There is a dark center
and she thinks of her mother,
her dark mouth open, airless
beneath the water.
Silent,
she remembers the sound
of her voice—
a radiant ache—
the water breathes.
She releases the lily and sits up,
only to watch it slip
farther down, slip
away, as everything seems to do,
and it’s her face, then,
alone and pale
on the black surface—
no center, no mouth,
a dark stillness in the reeds.
Her Keeper
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I want to say
are you still afraid—of the night?
but she’d kill me if I knew.
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I lay awake imagining
the chemicals that flood
her brilliant mind, dousing
her down to a caged animal
that’s half-beating.
My sister doesn’t sleep.
I wait for dawn to meet her.
In our silent tongue she tells me
that there’s a price to pay
when you forge bravery;
there’s a debt that’s owed
to your soul when you
abandon it to danger.
Her dark eyes—those
faceless moons—tell me
somehow I’d been right
to hide in the dark
pretending to dream.
Difficult Degrees
How strong the wood is
how heavy the water
how fire burns you and saves you
how we can suffocate in space.
A leaf knows no direction
and it cycles.
How I slip across a plank of moods
how I gaze so far in my small mind
how I am not this sick body,
but a cycle—a circle, a painted sphere in orbit
given to touch—to feel—magnitudes.
I know no direction.
The dark, the light—two poles of a whole.
Balance: I pull you too far down
and then too high, but at such lengths
I wander beyond myself
examining the weight
the burning
the constancy
the continent
of such a life.
Drowning the Lotus
A night electric by the moon
she reaches beneath
the water, warm as a bath,
and pulls down the lily’s stem,
enough to drown
its glowing petals
beaming below the surface,
faded but brilliant.
Slip, farther down
slip, farther down
she pulls until it is a blurred
white sun.
There is a dark center
and she thinks of her mother,
her dark mouth open, airless
beneath the water.
Silent,
she remembers the sound
of her voice—
a radiant ache—
the water breathes.
She releases the lily and sits up,
only to watch it slip
farther down, slip
away, as everything seems to do,
and it’s her face, then,
alone and pale
on the black surface—
no center, no mouth,
a dark stillness in the reeds.
