Outside my window, a maple’s leaves
loosen and return to the blacktop
between apartment buildings. Down below,
dumpsters wait like crocodiles to crush
hog deer, flying foxes, my broken tv,
while treetops remain level with my soul
rummaging for proof of a world that still loves me.
Inside my cage, too close to death’s unwrapped
mouth, the daily train passes, a gazelle.
Her elegant pronking, her refusal to stop.
Poem In Quarantine With Dying Husband
Amy Small-McKinney’s third and newest chapbook, One Day I Am A Field, was written during Covid and her husband’s illness and death (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). For the 2020 virtual AWP, she co-moderated an interactive discussion, Writing Through Grief & Loss: The Intersection of Social and Personal Grief During Covid. Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Towards Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Anomaly, Baltimore Review, Comstock Review, Ilanot Review, Indianapolis Review, Pedestal Magazine, and SWWIM, among others. She was the 2011 Montgomery County Poet Laureate. Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian, and her book reviews have appeared in journals, such as Prairie Schooner and Matter. She resides in Philadelphia.