REBECCA FOUST

I KEEP HOPING

In our minds our sister is lost to us

even as she continues to walk

the earth, pacing the small rooms 

of her last home. Waking, sleeping,

barely eating, sleeping, waking, 

and effacing minute-by-minute 

into a ghost. She is lost 

to us, but I keep hoping

that in her own mind she is not lost

—in her mind she is back in her life

taking dictation at the pentagon

and coming home to work 

on her dollhouses till dawn,

painting lines fine as an eyelash

with a brush fine as an eyelash,

trimming tiny topiaries and 

Christmas trees with twinkle lights

no bigger than the spark 

that flies off a cap gun. No bigger 

than the beads flocking the trees 

in her shadowbox

with its “Winter White” theme

—she is lost to us—

and I keep hoping that in her mind

she is not lost but still there 

somewhere, taking dictation 

of what is being said

but not understood, unstringing 

the tiny, shining pearls 

of her memories, picking them up 

with tweezers and using a glue gun

to affix each one, beautiful, 

immutable, in its perfect place. 

SNEAKY LIKE THAT

In the sixth week of living by myself

during the pandemic, I set up a bird feeder

to feel less alone. Now birds

with plump breasts—pigeon and quail, 

nuthatch & towhee—are pecking at the trail 

of seed laid almost to my back door. 

They remind me of bird in The Poetics 

of Space using its breast to shape its nest cup 

of mud, hollowed and pressed

with so much persistence

that the nest could be said to be made, 

also, of suffering. 

Lately I’ve been gritting my teeth 

through the days, but I’ve also begun 

waking to birdsong.

The birds are so many, so close, 

&—it occurs to me—not all that fast 

or smart. It took a week

to coax them to the feeder, 

to teach them it was there—free food 

for the taking. Maybe one 

could be snared for my dinner, 

I think, when the food supply fails. In fact, 

I could eat their seed

ground into bread & could

in a real pinch actually catch one, 

or maybe it’s time 

to start thinking 

about buying a gun, you know, 

just for food and maybe, 

protection. That’s how 

the thoughts never thought before 

come in now, often, 

but rarely articulate—sneaky like that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Foust’s fourth full-length book Only (Four Way Books 2022) received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Recognitions include runner up for the 2022 Missouri Review Editors Prize, winner of the Pablo Neruda, CP Cavafy, and James Hearst poetry prizes, a Marin County Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Common, Five Points, Ploughshares, POETRY, and Quarterly West.