Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
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Samantha Malay
Equinox
this morning I put clean sheets on the bed
and remembered it was still summer last week
I didn’t pick blackberries
or wade in the lake
like I said I would
but I rationed a bag of plums
from my brother’s tree
buried a bird I found on the park path
watched the sun move across the kitchen wall
as I washed dishes
on my days off
SAMANTHA MALAY’s poetry recently appeared in Kind Writers, Five South, and Plainsongs. She grew up in rural northeastern Washington state, where her family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and read by kerosene lamp. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her work. https://samanthamalay.com/