ice cream nickels fumbled
down worn slats
wooden stoop.
wild strawberries dredged
in sugared milk
silver airplane spoon.
parental porch light
pebbled white glass
devastated skin.
double window
opening to our private
sunbathing roof.
sunset over the Delaware
13th floor studio
fired brick city.
carved marble mantel
cold-cream rosettes
logs crackling.
closet too narrow
hiding nothing real
paint by numbers deer.
rainbow broken on oak
sunshine prisms
leaded glass door.
crocuses I planted
veined petals
unkissed eyelids.
honeycomb dripping gold
my own body
sealed Ball jar.
— Angele Ellis
Angele Ellis is author of Under the Kaufmann’s Clock (Six Gallery Press), a new hybrid collection of poetry and flash fiction with photographs by Rebecca Clever; Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook); and Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems won her an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She lives in Friendship, both a neighborhood and a state of mind. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on WESA 90.5 FM.
