Love Poem
by Kendra Aber-Ferri
After so many horrors
we grew strange,
stuffing the heads of chickens
into bags, burying them in the yard,
hanging the snouts of pigs
from trees to ward off
witches. I grew to love you
then, the way your hair
stretched always up, like a plant
toward the sun, and once, pulling
me behind your barn you cooed
like an owl in my ear. Then
we were cats, blind and tailless
bumping up against stuff
in the dark. You were given
your brother's farm. I gave
birth to a dead man's baby
beneath the kitchen table, but
there was no blood and you said
I'd none left to give. You were wrong.
And when the baby paled and wouldn't nurse,
I left it in the woods by a log.
Kendra Aber-Ferri received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently working on a book of poems about the Salem Witch Trials. Her poems have recently appeared in Tar River Poetry, Barnwood Poetry Magazine, and Apple Valley Review.