Hospitality

          for the children of Latournelle  


The jetsam gathers here, the violence of trash
flippant from a house, waste—not wasted—used to build.

Who knows what language to use here. We use here. Off-
key singing off mark, sponging trees stretch for the notes.

Arms out, hands out, fingers out. The sun coats us all
as we touch and clap and hold. You put your right foot

in, you put your right foot out, you put your right
foot in. Your right foot, stung large by an obese bee,

the barb pulled from your foot by a wisp of a priest,
ginger, spilling blessings with his reach. A thought of right

to water lost and forgotten like an ebbing.
We go to the well together.

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Sarah McCann earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is published in such journals as The Bennington Review and Hanging Loose. Her poetry appeared in Visiting Frost and the Academy of American Poets anthology, New Voices. She edited a collection of poetry, Tertium Quid, by the American poet Robert Lax. Her translations from Modern Greek have been recognized by the Fulbright Foundation and published in such journals as Words Without Borders and World Literature Today. Rose Fear, her translations of Maria Laina, was published by World Poetry Books. She has had one chapbook published, Peripatetica.