The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Katherine Fallon



Letter to My Sister


I dreamt our parents gave a lecture we expected
to be on teeth: Mother with the blue-orange

blow torch and a violent, spinning crucible; Father
with the soft-tongued secret of the Cusp of Carabelli.

But Mother didn’t speak and Dad wrote endless code
on the green board. He said, Now then, doesn
t that

make sense? And we agreed.  No one
s ever liked
to disappoint him. He clapped his hands and a cloud

of white dust spread through the room.  And that
s how
it happens, my little ones, he said, pointing to his tidy

characters, that
s how and why everything decays.



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