Erica Goss won the 2019 Zocalo Poetry Prize. Her collection, Night Court, won the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Recent publications include Spillway, A-Minor, Collateral, Slant, San Pedro River Review, and Rise Up Review. She is the founder of Girls’ Voices Matter, a filmmaking workshop for teen girls. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones. Please visit her at www.ericagoss.com.

While You Can

Don’t be afraid

don’t look for signs.

Tomorrow

you will arrive

just after the explosion,

waving your arms through

the light-struck dust. 

I’m the ash that coats your tongue,

makes you cough

and cough. No,

I can’t stay quiet tonight

on the street made of words.

Soon I will pass through you

like hair through a comb.

Love me while you can,

before the hot air crumbles

like sand; love me like

the black and white sky

spinning.

First published in Caveat Lector, Summer/Fall 2010

Daylily

warm nights I dream you back to me

out of your father’s sleeping body

you would be twenty this year daughter

once I sat in a room filled with women

the air smelled of dog fur and rain

we imagined you a face but not a name

every year it’s the same routine

I sift fresh soil for you, dig you up

and bury you, call you seed, bulb, tuber,

animal, mineral, flower, anything but daughter

the world grows hotter – April feels like August

it’s my birthday month – yours too, born

and dead the same day like the dates

on the smallest stones in the pioneer graveyard

where I stand in the sloppy rain

a stamp from Spain shows Madonna and child

affixed above the word frágil

when the sun goes down I have nothing of you

not even your ashes daughter

and though your glimmer dims each year

spring will not stop coming

and I cannot stop planting

daylily, spiderwort, morning glory

flowers that bloom for only one day

                        —First published in Spillway, 2018

Boden

I know it’s hard to love me;

crushed under cities

scraped from your shoes.

I want attention. I want

to live under fingernails

find my way into your mouth.

I give you monkey-flower, nettles,

the bay tree’s rising scent.

I understand sacrament. 

Spread a blanket over me.

I banish isolation.

Take your lover right here.

Clotted within me,

the dead are silent.

I could rouse them, but I won’t.

I lift mountains over bones.

In the green grass of the field

take your rest in me.

            —First published in The Hummingbird Review, Spring/Summer 2013

Post-Last Rites

I break the compost

from its slumber,

pierce and shift it

with my shovel.

It steams at me,

releasing scents of

last year’s rain. I pull

the pile apart, press

my hand into the living

warmth, drop chopped

stems and petals

of funeral flowers

into last year’s salads,

green beans, corn cobs,

newspaper headlines.

I work the shovel

corner to corner, move

dry edges to the center,

cover the flowers

in soft damp layers.

One month since she died.

Flies rise, shimmering,

wing-facets catching

the sun.

            —First published in The Tishman Review, October 2017

Undertow

After the great rains, I faced the sea.

How it opened and closed me.

My fingers found stones.

My fingers found glass.

Small plants quivered in the corroding wind.

My child stood in the surf. A cold slurry

of water and sand dissolved beneath his feet,

faster and faster until I understood.

I pulled him up, rough in my fear. His startled shriek.

How quickly the twin holes where his legs were disappeared.

Copyright © Erica Goss.