Carolina Hospital

Under a Still Sky

It is a light December day, so quiet, I can hear
myself breathe as the scissors thin in slow motion.

Clumps of gray drift across the floorboards
to the grass, like dreams you want to forget.

Nothing matters but each strand. The sun feels
gentler here in the shaded deck. In the front porch,

it takes aim, as we sway in the hammock. The heat
making us sleepy, I lean into you, a reflecting light.

Two yellow bellied flycatchers flitter over the red
bottlebrush blossoms. They are hovering, like us.

 

 

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Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press, 2019) and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press, 2004), as well as Myth America (Anhinga Press, 2020) and How to Get into Trouble (forthcoming from Anhinga Press), both collaborative collections with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina; plus the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books, 2000). Her work has appeared in publications such as the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; and Rumors Secrets and Lies: Narrative Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice.