Holes

Holes

Shana Ross

 

For we so loved holes we let them

move into this world. A screened porch the wind 

passes through without howling. Let grief 

soak in the concrete driveway, 

let it freeze & thaw & erode & pit

the surface until there is nothing to do but watch 

things crumble. Who am I missing, as weeks 

collapse like dunes walking themselves 

through a desert, the dead keep 

scooping themselves from my heart 

with a melon baller. I grow gristle 

on the ragged edges. I edit

the Christmas card list, three rows each

this year and last. I rust from my own 

tears like tin, stuck standing in this clearing, ax raised.

 

 

 

Shana Ross is a recent transplant to Edmonton, Alberta and Treaty Six Territory.  Qui transtulit sustinet.  Her work has recently appeared in Cutbank Literary Journal, Laurel Review, Gigantic Sequins, Meetinghouse Magazine and more. She is the winner of the 2022 Anne C. Barnhill prize and the 2021 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry competition, as well as a 2019 Parent-Writer Fellowship to Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She serves as an editor for Luna Station Quarterly and a critic for Pencilhouse.