Stefanie Kirby

With Wind

The curtain breathes
when I give birth
to death, its push
from open windows:
out. They mark
my door with a leaf
to say, There is
no breath inside
this room, only wind.
Sometimes death is
a daughter & the wind
her breath. Leaves
eddy, form a circle
the size of her that lifts
into the wind, round
like a belly. My body
that contains a womb
that contained a body
that contains a womb
was a mother
with a daughter held
inside. I bury her
under the juniper tree
because of the wind
& the berries, green. Hard
like eyes. Over the years
they will soften.

Anatomy of a House on Fire

The house is on fire. The dead baby crawls
through the window, into the clamoring
crowd. So many wanting hands, so many
eyes cast into the flames like cold suns.
I want to tell them, There’s no heartbeat.
A bulb has no heartbeat. A suburb has no
heartbeat. A burden has no heartbeat. A fire
has no heartbeat. A fire is relentless: a dead
baby that licks the floor, aflame.

Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Maine Review, wildness, Passages North, Poet Lore, The Offing, and elsewhere.