Cathy Barber

Sleep

A golden shovel after Jack Kerouac*

In the deathliness of sleep, my arms
have somehow bent stiff, folded
under my fat belly and thighs to
make an even larger lump under the
mountain of comforters and blankets. The moon,
nearly full, makes a circle on the shade. Among
my dreams are memories of Aunt Lucille’s farm, the
creek’s slick stones, abrupt mooing cows.

*The Haiku Anthology, Cor Van Den Heuvel, editor

Sickbed

A golden shovel after Richard Wright haiku #425

I think often of my mother. An
imperfect relationship— not empty
of love, but I disappointed her. Her sickbed:
the ambulance. An
abrupt end to her indented
life: its loss of home, of hope, the white
holes in a Christian life. Just a gurney and a pillow
at the end, racing toward deliverance. In
these thirty-four years since she died, a weak
pulse still beats in our connection; the winter
she died, this winter’s sun.

*Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon

Cathy Barber’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Slant, SLAB, Kestrel, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poems2Go, and the anthologies Rewilding: Poems for the Environment and Cancer Poetry Project 2. Her work has been nominated for a Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Aardvarks, Bloodhounds, Catfish, Dingoes (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) is a collection of twenty-six word abecedarians. She is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program and makes her home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. If you want to reach out with a note, you can reach her through her website or at cathy.ann.barber@gmil.com. She loves tiramisu, especially when it’s extra creamy.

… return to Issue 13.2 Table of Contents.