MARIA WILLIAMS-RUSSELL
Not Dead Yet
Digging
I hear my mother calling.
Her voice is
hot milk
dank earth.
She is between me and the dirt.
I am
drenched to my breasts
clutching my shovel. I tell her
You are a wisp of ghost
rolling across the prairie of the mind.
And we laugh
the kind of laugh that causes a passing
breeze.
Trumpets play.
They do not play for me
Oh kings, oh daughters.
Maria Williams-Russell earned her MFA at Goddard College and her poems have appeared in Bateau, Bellevue Literary Review, Sous Rature, and numerous other journals and sidewalks. She is the author of the chapbook A Love Letter to Say There Is No Love (FutureCycle Press 2010) and teaches writing and literature at Greenfield Community College. (mariawilliams@gmail.com)