The Starving Wind
by Steve Klepetar
“She could feel
the breeze in her ears like water…”
Rita Dove
Sounds burst as water in a blue swirl of gnats,
ghost parade wading out beyond the dunes.
“Go get her mama!” Cries echoed that night, as rain
danced across the river to a slash of silver light.
She came, rushing in a rage storm, flailing
hands and black hair on fire. Rings melted
along her finger bones. The child’s shadow
flickered on the fence line, breaking in spaces
between slats, as if her thin body were squeezed
flat, her face stripped of those acid pool eyes.
Someone saw small hands waving beneath clouds.
Then nothing, a blankness more transparent
than glass or air. We called her name, calling
and calling her back, but the starving wind
swallowed all sounds. Her mama hurled stones
into the invisible deep, leapt across protruding
rocks on wings of ice and steel. All night she wept
the river’s song, pouring hunger’s flood on meager soil.
Gyroscope Review 7!