How We Failed to Perish
Susan Cronin
How you scraped the earth bare.
How you gathered night’s crumbs from the cupboard and said, “Eat.”
How only the uncreaturely could eat.
How the chimney swallowed upwards our cries.
How the one-eared cat listened intently at our door.
How our questions coated our tongues with ash.
How the nests in the eaves sealed themselves with doubt.
How the rat holes gaped with accusations.
How our wooden roof wore down, splinter by splinter, sucked into the sky.
How the earth grew dry under the wheels of a passing cart.
How I insisted the brittle twigs breathed out sage, not death.
How the barrel beneath the rainspout collected our hunger.
How the days piled up and slept behind us like vagrants.
How the draught licked clean the insides of our pots.
How the lid would not sit still, how the empty kettle sparked.
How the plow, the crow, and the fishbone allied themselves against us.
How your eyes grew pintight and would not close.
How you swore there were holes in the sky.
How a moon-silked arm snaked by our window.
How the pale air shivered and did not weep.
How our rags were made by the gaze of strangers.
How the gap in the fence made a joke of us.
How ladders pushed themselves up through the earth.
How a howling train passed through the sky.
How the days, inprobably, wrapped themselves in the news for warmth.
How the moon never thought to snow.
Susan Cronin studied at Rutgers University, Sarah Lawrence College, and The New School, where she earned an MFA. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, most recently in Quaint, White Stag, Nashville Review, DMQ Review, and Gingerbread House.