Mrs. Hareblue is a sick woman
Her hair gray-blue held in
A net like a fish caught
Pencil hair with the white circlet
Of halo a graphite
Frog an icicle as if someone has
Cried over her from above Mrs. Hareblue
Has a tendril escaped on her left
Side a curl so thin you might think
It dust It is the late
eighteenth century
She entered the house on the order
Of Captain John Bradford
As my dad’s siblings would be sent
To the orphanage by their mother who
Herself was given to neighbors when
Her own mother died in childbirth
When I hear him sing I’m in Spain
At the beginning showing my
Midriff having a curfew I was
Penciled in once at a fair drawn
A young woman yellow-haired knowing
Nothing of hydraulics mezzanines
I always thought if I found
A good spot in life I could stay it
Would be my place but I can’t grab
A hand keep going there is a little
Twirl on Mrs. Hareblue’s dress a little
Ornament or breath
Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; and most recently, How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and winner of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s work appears in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.
