These Days
Anne Marie Warner


 
These days, our sometimes-holy ghosts are the handfuls of ashen birds in fractals of bare trees—restless, unwarm, exposed. Shiftless pigeon-feather eggshell skies we want cracked open demand electric lighting in the near-noon kitchen.
 
A jotted scribble found: He restores the years locusts have eaten. Google reveals she was quoting the prophet Joel. She must have said this over the phone. Brother Joel continues: You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied / And praise the name of the Lord who has dealt wondrously with you.
 
Memories of recent sight and sound: a heavy skillet of lemon slices—browning, bubbling, crisping—in the rendered fat of bird. Sunday’s supper was a shallow bowl of durum wheat semolina shells, some curling over cabbage shreds and green pea pearls, mingling with dill in a sauce of lemon cream. Today there will be Tom Kha Gai (which I cannot say but will cook slow all day) with its juices and zests of lemon and lime.
 
All this while Congress takes its hostages, its piece of pie, and bickers with mouths full over which party’s children to save, to fund, to impress their well-dressed dreams upon. The appointed ponder if a wall will save us. Can a wall save us from ourselves?
 
“Longing for sun,” I text to him, “This must be why so many of our dinners lately involve lemon. Trying to injest the sun.” I correct myself: “ingest.” But maybe injest is correct. These days seem to be some kind of darkly feathered manifestation of manifold jest.










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About the Author: Anne Marie Warner is a Chicago carpenter's daughter perched in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She's authored an essay collection (unpublished) loosely themed around accidentally becoming Anglican. In 2018 her photography was exhibited at Art Prize 10, a public juried art show in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and published in Flyway: Journal of Writing & the Environment. She holds a B.A. in Journalism & English from Taylor University and doesn't get to play nearly enough ping pong.

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