Fault

The geography, it hums. A house halved. Some bitterness come down from the mountain, a satin heel lost in a creekbed at the base.

The one you loved or worse is in the next county, gone to child, drowning in the smell of himself. You think of him, rub your mouth.

He waits with the others who brought you stuttering into this world, watching for signs inside the vein, this end game, brief knife.

A History

Had I not been born
a container, room for cream.

The girl who catches salmon with her hands
still hides her face in her father’s shirt.

And he is afraid,
her father, so afraid.  

Donora Hillard’s poetry collection Theology of the Body was recently released in print by Gold Wake Press. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc Books, 2010), Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), Night Train, PANK, and Spork, among others. She has taught writing at King’s College, Penn State University, and elsewhere. She is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Wayne State University in Detroit.