Runner Up: 2022 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest
The baby bunny’s back again,
chewing grass with ears
turning and turning.
Rabbits were thought
to reproduce without touch,
their white fur pure as the Mother.
When my husband hoses the garden,
it darts and hides behind a shovel, femoral
artery pulsing as I count the seconds.
“Attentiveness is the natural prayer
of the soul,” said some French philosopher.
I watch its little heartbeat beat beat beat.
ii.
I follow you with my spiritual name,
braid your voice into my own.
Children chatter outside the frame.
In memory, the sun sits at a sixty-degree
angle to Earth. We’re prettily
reflecting and scattering the wavelengths.
When I called on the dream line
it wasn’t you really, hair too short
and a yellow blonde, but it felt good
to say I’m capable of growing too.
I see your black hollyhock, fruitful
while taking its time to become conscious.
I want to be the bunny held close
as you give the baby to another,
to lie in the blue of you.
Kelly Lorraine Andrews’ poems have appeared in Dream Pop Journal, Ghost Proposal, Ninth Letter, PANK, and Prick of the Spindle, among others. She is the author of five chapbooks, including Sonnets in Which the Speaker Is on Display (Stranded Oak Press, 2019), The Fear Archives (Two of Cups Press, 2017), and My Body Is a Poem I Can’t Stop Writing (Porkbelly Press, 2017). She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. Along with her husband and two cats, she’s tending to her garden, trying to be tender to herself.