Poetry Contest Winner, Honorable Mention, Spring/Summer 2024

Sarah Stinnett

Apophenia

Do you see? I say. Mom follows the line of my finger
and squints through squares set near
the rim of her glasses. Could be, she says;
maybe a pitcher? We stare and guess
at the cracked half-body lying sideways
in gravel and wet leaves—the terracotta base
zig-zagged down the middle with a tear
through an etched note: For my lo. . .
The girth is glazed—glassy like water—
blue-pink as peony petals in the dusk.
Punchbowl. Tea caddy. Wide-bellied jug.
Who knows, someone must have tossed it
into this ditch near the Lewis’s farm
where we’re walking after dinner.
Mr. Lewis dropped dead a few weeks back,

his heart giving out one morning after waffles.
He used to make maple syrup in his sugar shack
and once taught me how to sugar. I imagine
Mrs. Lewis dozing by a fire or folding his flannels—
red buffalo check, green gingham—not there
where we’re walking, which is like, say, Green Gables—
those fields rolling full-bodied, as if moved
not by wind but by some other source beneath,
within, or beyond; and, getting closer now,
I wonder if he’s still nearby, still present?

We look at the herd of cows, milky and spotted,
burnt-umber, and two calves—one a cloud—grazing
in the meadow, tails swinging in the long grass,
which one of them flicks to swat at the buzzing
behind it. Their presence makes me ordinary again.
We near the barn and a clutch of chickens peck
at seeds, I think of the ashes at home on your nightstand
next to “The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife,”
bookmark right where you left

                                                               Della and Perry
lying in the field, his head in her lap, her light
blue dress almost white, both half-asleep
in the day’s drawl. She feels herself lift up
beyond herself, so close to her dead husband
she can hear him call her name, his clear voice
swelling like a far-off song over the hill.

It’s just trash, I say on our way back home,
as I watch her stare. . . I tug on her jacket,
let’s go, and turn up the road,
but she stands there a moment more and says
yes, now I see, I see, it must have been somebody’s urn.