Zenovia

The boy woke most nights mid-gasp,

silent scream cut from fright—

a blink through the keyhole,

or shift past the door gap.

He grew, became a father and spoke of his great aunt

few alive remembered. With each relative buried

she became more myth, orphic.

“I’ve told you about the prairies before.”

The son envisioned plots sliced sharply, glare,

canola fields that burn canary yellow.

A breeze, unhampered and bullish,

stirring like oceanic currents.

His ancestors stared out over dirt

and across clean lines. Wind

washed their ears, collarbones,

they sensed grandness in it all.

“I’ve told you about my great aunt before.”

Zenovia. She cured things: affliction, phobia.

At dusk she dragged a chair to the east field,

old stockyards. His father sat

for five hours until legs numb,

he sobbed, and afterward slept

uninterrupted. Only years later he learned

beneath the chair in char-black soil,

Zenovia had buried every knife on the farm.