Blackbird an online journal of literature and the arts Spring 2008 Vol. 7 No. 1

POETRY

TODD FREDSON

Mistress (1)

The black lantern must have been an older son
in what seems a suspicious stillness.
He hooks himself on one black branch
of the fissures in the concrete wall of the laundry room.
He watches mother go, and brother.
Watches the door drag closed like a till
behind white horses. Their torsos are the snow drifts
the moon has rejected.