Still Life with Placenta and Cherry Tree
Her spade scores and slashes the soil, grubs,
shakes its loaded tongue; then with firm hands
she kneads placenta and dirt
till they yield to the oven of her palm.
Knowing nothing about the needs of trees,
she probes the crater with the back of her palm
as she’s seen new widows do, waiting for clues.
None comes, so she releases the disrobed rootball
into doughy mud, finger-combing the vines,
pressing their mouths hard into the ground.
She can already see the budding eyes
though it’s late summer, and this is wetland,
and she’ll be long gone before the first blush,
once the early honeybees descend upon it.
Mihaela Moscaliuc’s most recent poetry collections are Cemetery Ink (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) and Immigrant Model (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). Read more.
“Still Life with Placenta and Cherry Tree” originally appeared in Immigrant Model, by Mihaela Moscaliuc, © 2015. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.