Poetry: Issue Two

Karen J. Weyant

The Girl Who Could Catch Echoes

It's easy, she explains, of her collection:
a snap from a single twig, a Strike!
from a little league umpire, a crack
of thunder ten seconds after the flash,
everything displayed in the hollow

of a tree trunk, moss clinging
to the damp bark. She pins down
a child's secret with a pine needle,
police sirens with old thumb tacks,
piano lessons with a bent guitar pick.

She demonstrates each capture,
her right arm above her head, hand
curled, or sometimes both palms swinging
ahead of her, cupped low. She doesn't talk
of the battles – the noon whistle that bit

her left wrist, the screech of tires
crushing her knuckles, the whispers
lodged in the back of her thumbnails,
the ones she scrapes out, tearing,
with the edge of her teeth.