CLAWFOOT
Poem for boy with all his baby teeth in a ring box under his bed. Poem for boy with bee stingers in his palm, for broken neck birds, too many pink scars on his shoulders. Poem for boy nailing our scarecrow to the tree out back. Poem for boy, bloodless hands, dead father, weighed down branches, steady. Poem for riverbank eulogy, poem for the house on fire, for the empty bedrooms, for the baby teeth, for his scratched out face, for the wheat I pulled to make that scarecrow whole. Poem for boy, for husk, for knotted rope, and a white bird, all quiet, all burned.
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YASMIN BELKHYR is a Moroccan-born, NYC-raised poet in Honeydew, South Africa. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in PANK, Word Riot, Hobart, and SOFTBLOW. She is also the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Winter Tangerine Review. You can visit her at yasminbelkhyr.com
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Read more by Yasmin Belkhyr:
Author website
Five poems in PANK
Poem in WORD RIOT