BLACK CROWN

MONICA RICO

The moment
where
I hold
like a
heron

so still
statue
to sky

spine
collected
coins of
birch leaves
lay sea

& of course
there are
flowers
without
scent, the
ostentatious
hydrangeas

cover the house
lest it not
look like
the others

even the shade
matches the lines
in the lawns

chess pieces
to a name
plate hung
above the
garden &
on the porch
because
if we throw
our dishes
from window
to window
there is
no chance
of hitting
much but

the walking
women &
their silly
dogs who
couldn’t
recognize
a heron
from a
hydrant

both water
& cement
where we
dare not
stop the
flowers from
loneliness.

Monica Rico is Mexican American and the author of PINION, winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry selected by Kaveh Akbar. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan’s HZWP and is the Program Manager of the Bear River Writers’ Conference. She has recently published poems in The Atlantic, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, The Slowdown, Ecotone, Poetry Northwest’s Life List, Gastronomica, and The Missouri Review. Follow her at www.monicaricopoet.com.

Find this piece on page 26 of our inaugural print issue.