by Ann Marie Wranovix

There are no orphans anymore
at St. Peter’s, but the sun shines
hot as ever on the dunk tank,
on the shooting gallery and the little train}
inching along the pavement in a slow loop.

Politicians sweat like everyone else,
passing out bags and balloons
and emery boards.  Fans flutter
in the thick air and more kids
per square foot than anywhere else in Memphis}
clamor for hot dogs and lemonade.

There are no orphans anymore,
or none that live here, but the needs remain:
a nursing home to fund, a temporary
home for troubled girls, a daycare center
where babies still wait for parents to show up.

An old woman in a wheelchair
with a balloon tied to the arm
stirs the air with a fan marked
“Vote for Murray” and watches the children
snatch plastic ducks from a trough of water.

Grab the wheels quick before
she floats away lifted up
like orphans light as helium
balloons let loose by careless children.
Pile on the politicians, load up
the train, fill every bag with blue bears
and rings and watches and penny candy.

Make all the children lie down
together and press against the earth
with the full weight of every attachment
before the ground trembles and the grass flies.

by Ann Marie Wranovix

Centering Prayer
 for my father

I wasn’t there the night
my sisters held your hands,
I can’t describe the froth
that bubbled from your mouth,
or feel your choking fear,
when the lungs slammed shut,
or bear the heavy space
that pooled around your bed.

That’s a cheap trick mostly
used by rhetoricians,
apophasis: to deny
what you mean to affirm.
Also theologians,
though they practice without
words, walking an empty
way, except Aquinas,
whose more capacious frame
allows analogy
the next best thing to silence.

Sometimes I let myself stop
breathing after the exhale,
resting in the still point,
emptied out, no longer
feeling my clothes or my skin,
my pulse like tiny stitches
threading me to life, or like
a shy bird fluttering
at an unseen window.

When I found your room that night
and took your hand, your skin
smooth and still warm, you lay there

empty in the wordless air
that held and balanced us
like the silence between breaths.

by Meg Smith

I came for the sun,
the music,
the white tigers,
but, something else.
I arrived in rainbow gauze,
an unwelcome bridesmaid.
And we sat amid the palm leaves,
as we sat once at midnight
at Lake Ontario,
in a dark latitude of rocky shores.
To the waters, I return,
sanctified by the tide.
I came for the sun,
and the truth of the barren sky,
and so was fulfilled.

by Meg Smith

I am blanketed, sure,
ready for Advent.
On this floor,
I’ve made a wreath
of apples —
bruised, pocked, red-green.
Within their circle,
I’ve made a circle,
of pine needles.
I will mark each day
in a blue notebook.
In smooth arcs,
I will craft
a snow angel,
in snow air,
on this same floor.
And spring will find me thus,
empty but free,
and my best of psalms
yet to breathe.