WRITER’S CORNER
10 FOR SENIORS ONLY!
Beth Copeland is the author of two full-length
poetry books, Transcendental Telemarketer and
Traveling through Glass. Her poems have
appeared in The Atlanta Review, The North
American Review, Rattle, The Southern Poetry
Anthology, Tar River Poetry, and other literary
journals. She was featured as poet of the week on
PBS NewsHour. She lives in a log cabin in North
Carolina.
Release
Imagine a goldfinch in your fist. Open it
and watch as olive wings soar over dark
steeples. If you’re grieving for what never was or will be,
bring your fingers to your palm, always
empty, the finch already free.
Concrete Angel
Becky plants a red silk rose
in the fold of the angel’s robe
and shoots a rain
scarred cheek and archaic smile
against Grandfather Mountain,
cedars and a cyclone
fence with strand of barbwire
like greenbrier thorns.
I snap headstones splotched
with lichen and stark
granite markers in the grass—Mother,
Father, and a molar-white
stone with Ba chiseled on a broken
half. Whose baby
sleeps beneath that severed
word? Whose loved ones
rest in this small mountain
graveyard where bones
crumble to nothing? Who
will grieve for us?
Bone Moon
Swallow a tablet that tastes
like chalk. Chase it
with an aspirin. Already
an inch
shorter than at 60, bones
thinner, body that much
closer to the grave, I almost
trip in the clearing where a bruised
moon looms above black branches. Can
I
slip through these pines without
falling? Can my husband—no spring
chicken himself—catch me? Snow
melts under my skin
as the moon blooms only
to disappear
again.