The wire dahlia who lives

at the end of October Road

is my mother—

see her thrash her petals 

against the porch steps,

hear her mutter at the trowel

and the cowering sow bugs. 

The chrysanthemums look away,

silent in their solar flares.

Something’s wrong

with old ladybug

and the starlings know. 

The rake, snaggletoothed 

and thrumming,

hides in the warp of a loose board 

hoping for a chance

to escape the shed and crawl 

into the sun. Mother’s eye

almost catches her later

out beyond the field

gobbling leaves 

at the gold circumference

of night.

Amee Nassrene Broumand is a queer Iranian American poet from the Pacific Northwest. A Best of the Net nominee and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in the anthology Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (Green Linden Press, 2021) as well as in numerous journals, including 3:AM Magazine, Carousel, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Rust + Moth, and Sundog Lit. Find her on Twitter @AmeeBroumand.