about the author
Tara Mae Mulroy is a former Managing Editor of The Pinch and a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at the
University of Memphis. Her poems, stories, and essays are published or forthcoming in Third Coast, CutBank, and others. Her chapbook, Philomela, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in 2014. Her blog can be found at taramaemulroy.wordpress.com.
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Spirits
Tara Mae Mulroy
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His wife buries a swallow body under a rotted joist.
A thimble, the size of a child’s lips. A quilt a child
and her parents laid under. A tongue. Orange juice
his wife poured into a glass he swore was filmed
with blood. A fox, a fleshing beam, a good patina
of age. A door, a doe, a quiet, a quilt, a family
of three with one on the way. One that had to be buried
under a clematis bloom or its spirit would strangle
the next. Sometimes sugar is sugar, is his wife’s hand
on his arm, is eyes that look back
ringed with yellow.