%1

I would have 30 seconds of his day,
maybe 45 because of our exchange.

His brief glance at my driver’s license
showed him I live on the street
where his parents once owned a restaurant.

The place had a fire, he said,
and they sold it.
How are they, I inquired.
He didn’t know;
they are estranged from him.

I wished him a good day
then walked away,
my words dissolving
into the airport crush.

He remained to scrutinize other licenses,
some peaceful names:
Pine Road, Spruce Street, Poplar Place.

“I  hope to cultivate space to think about who we are as nurturers of our relationships and of the land,” writes Sayde Laine Anderson on her website (saydelaine.com). As a multimedia artist, illustrator, fiber artist, designer, teacher, and community builder, Anderson’s work across different media, landscapes, and communities is a continual engagement of the hyperlocal, the mended, the gathered, and the repurposed.

Let me see the wick of wing, white moons
surrounded

by blue-violet halos, etching
the black. Let me remember

it is also not that. Let me be
the compound eye
which slivers
                  the ultraviolet spectrum,
populates the invisible

we call hope, which is also
not that. When will you come, Lord?
We have asked over the ages, over

The heroine of Claire Luchette’s novel realizes she became a nun to avoid being herself.