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Home by Nicolette Westfall 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrissa Sandlin is poet living in Spring, Texas. She keeps an eye on her two dogs, Merlin and Varda, while writing. Her poems have been published in online magazines and she is an active member of the Humble Fiction Cafe.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrissa Sandlin

Flat windows, clear blue, saffron, winking green

where the sky rests in blinks and spectra

on upside down balloons and cut glass drops

hanging like sandbags from the afternoon.

 

Drop them on the sill and give her

time to take us backward, provisioned with

grandma's ginger cookies, emerald sugar

cast upon their sandy shore.

 

She said they reminded her of windows

broken on the dirt of the road.

She is curled like a tree

her hair tight like budded cotton,

Grandma Jill, with knitting needles

still piercing her bun.

 

She tells me of the cities through which

whole squadrons marched, needles ready

past blank glass faces, like these

impassive flows, backwards fountains,

light falling down their sides

while their green glass shot upward

like my upside down balloons.

 

In her voice, I link arms, valiant

with friends in grass-green skirts

formal in our pride, antique in our adulthood

fired by the banking of our youth.

 

She breaks me from the spells of men,

snares my thoughts from elves, drags them

from the dragons with romances of her pirate days

billows on the sod, a skirt that lifted

an entire body skyward, like the martial heft of brass and winds.

 

It will be otherwise for me, unskirted

slouching silent through my peace

in the broken plane of my adulthood.


Glass Ballast