Again
I imagine I’ll see you,
one day when you’re slim again,
and both your parents pass.
Your brothers won’t write
and your sisters won’t call,
just like they never did during
the war. The desert was warm
back then and my mother sent
you coffee—tons—because that’s
how much she thinks of you.
It must have tasted like the sand,
reassuring like the overstuffed
stockings your children held
onto as they waited for you
beneath our Christmas tree.
What year was that?
You’d think I recall.
I don’t.
Which Breed Do I Resemble?
And in the mirror, I
sometimes think about what’s behind me
A summer day, Lackland Air Force Base, ‘86.
I am striding down the street, when a bark
crosses the road. I don’t look over,
even though I know it’s directed it at
me. My uniform is starched, hair tucked
up, underneath my cap, and no make-up
to hide my pores. It is the first day
they allow me to walk solo around
the base. My eyes gather the horizon,
until I feel the bark the day I hid
my face from me. I wonder—did
you graduate with an honor ribbon
too? These days, I apply eyeshadow
with a small mirror. It’s brown to mask
my hooded lids. A little black
mascara lifts my lashes lightly.
Soup’s Off
Today, I’m making soup—
a chicken carcass, onion,
& celery—all for
you—a feast for when
you return from the
hunt. What you kill there,
I don’t know for sure.
For I’ve never seen it—
Remember when the dough rose
in the bowl? A cold kitchen didn’t matter.
Like when my stomach would round,
another pregnancy to fill
the side chairs, heirs at your table.
What are you doing all this time?
As I quietly stir—not to disturb
you from more important work.
Tonya Suther is a USAF veteran, a former news writer, and a poet. Her work tends to interrogate trauma, alienation, and isolation through the lens of a nomad. She explores domestic spaces, the homes she lived in as a child, on her own, and as a mother and spouse. She is interested in how the idea of home does and doesn’t represent safety and self-preservation. Her poetry has appeared in Fleas on the Dog, Zócalo Public Square, The Awakenings Review, and others. Her chapbook is On the Brink (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University.
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