Elegies
Madeline Cole
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2019 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Tom Howard, Poetry
The uncle I've never
Met is dying
In some Alaskan hospital
Wearing traces
Of my father's face
The waitress at the diner
Knows his name
And the Shrine
Of Saint Therese
Opens for him
His silence is
The thumb
Brushing against
My forehead
On Ash Wednesday
It is my birthday
I am eleven
My grandfather dies
In a bed in a
House in a forest
And becomes
A woodpecker
Tapping on the window
In the morning
For his wife
