~PENNY HARTER~

ARCHAEOLOGY

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She is always unearthing something—
here, a rotting bone a dog buried,
there, a headless doll with
stuffing leaking from its chest.

She digs in this field each night,
sniffing the dirt, savoring the strata
as she claws her way down
through soil and clay.

Perhaps the grinning skulls
of her cursed father, mother,
will turn up, blind as bulbs
waiting to sprout into her palms.

She carries resurrection in her hands,
her fingers splayed to sift the earth,
searching for some fragment of a skull
that answers to her name.



 
© by Penny Harter