by Sheree La Puma

When you fall from middle earth
my scars
become a selling point.
In a field outside
Los Angeles,
a pale moon rising
over blood
red blooms, poppies.
Somewhere,
in the world, my children
mourn
their father, alone.
Mother
is a body, void
of hope.
I used to be a wildflower
planted
& on this early
morning
I watch spring
explode
like the barrel of a
gun.

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Sheree La Puma is an award-winning writer whose personal essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in Heron River Review, Juxtaprose, The Rumpus, O:JA&L, Plainsongs, The Main Street Rag, Burningword Literary Journal, I-70 Review, Inflectionist Review, Levee, The London Reader, Bordighera Press - VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, Gravel, Foliate Oak, PacificReview, Westwind, and Ginosko Literary Review, among others. She received an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and has taught poetry to former gang members.