Provision

Monica Ferrell
For a long time I fed the children

From that inexhaustible larder
Money offers

But with the stores depleted
It now appears there’s only one well
Here that never runs dry,

Just one bulb in this house
That never goes out
Even in the hoarse, bluey

Hour when dawn spreads
Toward the horizon’s
Bald patch of trees,

When my earliest chorister
Leaps in the crib
And begins her orisons

Reaching out for this flawed
And dotted coastline
On which she’ll press her lips

To drink not milk
But time through a dark
Nipple.

Monica Ferrell is the author of three books of poetry and fiction, most recently You Darling Thing, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry.
Originally published:
June 16, 2020

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