Musings on Antigua

Michelle Donahue

The sides of buildings
have layers
washed
like sediment
in sandstone, groaned
and creaked through
time. A depth I stick
my hand into
that heart of cement.

The frayed sun
split, the tender color
before
it slips beneath
an edge.

Now sun
shines poked through
volcanoes. I sit in
the plateau where
land lowers. Here
where time
stratums old.
I begin.

Musings on Antigua II

A child bloomed
with gray hair, a spider
web wisp fighting from bun
like boulder pulled
from mountain behind
car bumper.

All the roads here
are made of tiny stones.

This old woman’s bones
make her small, wrist
slender enough
almost to fit
my ring, nearly
small enough
for me to lift
to carry,
to bring her home.

I wonder what age
means old here.

Michelle Donahue is a current MFA candidate in fiction at Iowa State where she is the managing editor of Flyway. She grew up in Southern California, but feels deeply the lust to move and explore new ground. She traveled to Guatemala last summer and wrote poems there to try, hopelessly, to understand. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Redactions, Lantern Journal, and Menacing Hedge. Find her at: michelledonahue1.wordpress.com.