~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Deborah H. Doolittle

Morning Tide

The dark waves of night draw back,

recede one murky layer

of black after another

until the gray left to us

fades the way laundry lightens

in the brilliance of the sun,

clouds drifting like galleons.

Higgs Blossom Poem

           "Most of what has been attached to my name should not have been."

                                                                                       —James Higgs

Between cracks in the pavement,

taproots tangling with riprap,

it appears half-mangled, half-magical. 

Yellow as our sun and as

profoundly rotund as

a hedgehog. Don't be fooled by its cuddly cute.

Its leaves are sharp and prickly,

stems barbed and darted. Its pale

milky sap difficult to quantify.

It blooms straight up like a shot

of tequila or your dad's

favorite 12-year-old bourbon whiskey.

Walking around it is best,

and here you were thinking this

was some kind of heaven-scented test.

Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places (including the United Kingdom and Japan) but now calls North Carolina home. An AWP Intro Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks, No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound. When not writing or reading or editing BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, she is training for running road races or practicing yoga while sharing a house with her husband, six housecats, and a backyard full of birds.