Lisbon

My grandmother in her dressing gown, remembering
the days, how they shook and lingered
over the calçada. Smell of salt weaving
between women’s skirts like a child.
On every corner, the sea scattered
secrets. Sky splayed open:
a fortune revealed, discarded.

From the burner, she lifts a hand to smooth
her faded hair. Between us a portal wends
like a crack in a windshield. That turf shed
on the other side, watery sunlight seeping
through its rafters, her sisters’ names
carved gruffly in the beams. How still
we must stay while waiting for our feathers
to plume, for our father’s voice to drop down,
a rope that frays instantly to flame. Climb
now sunward, Sulamith. Bird of passage
stringing its song like a thread between stars.

ξ

Lauren Green is the author of the chapbook A Great Dark House (Poetry Society of America, 2023) and the forthcoming novel The World After Alice (Viking/Penguin).