Janet I. BUCK holds a Ph.D. in English, and teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, poetics, and fiction have appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, CrossConnect, interweave, A Writer's Choice, Born Magazine, Stirring, The Melic Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Kimera, The Rose & Thorn, 2River View, Southern Ocean Review, Disquieting Muses, Urban Spaghetti, Perihelion, Mind Fire, San Francisco Salvo, Apples & Oranges, Ceteris Paribus, In Motion, Pogonip, Peshekee Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Suisun Valley Review, The Red Booth Review, The Poetry Kit, Miserere, Niederngasse, Lynx: Poetry from Bath, The Horsethief's Journal, salon D'Aarte, Pif, The Dragonfly Review, Morpo, Recursive Angel, Big Bridge, Eclectica, La Petite Zine, EWG Presents, pith, and hundreds of other journals world-wide. She is the author of four collections of poetry and a two-time Pushcart Nominee.

GRACE

"Age is a short word for a long sag,"
she spat. Then sat in still birth sigh,
an envelope with wetted chin,
as words just fit because they do,
twist a stanza to its close.
Her hair, a thick mosquito net,
a shiny silver teapot gray
undyed by shame,
soft as tiny cookie crumbs.
"As you get nearer to a grave,
your wrinkles gain their passion creases
penciling some chasm's lip."
The art of it all bubbling
in her toothless smile.
"Blood" she claimed, "is lipstick
of the perishing peeling off a setting sun."
I shut my ears to this defeat,
couldn't let it penetrate.
Her skin as thin as breakfast crepes.
I rhyme too much, but so did she.

Her eyes were marble messages--
I was a child at the top of the stairs,
fearing light and wisdom rocks
would roll and fall and not return.
Her skeleton a banister
I'd leaned upon in times of knives.
Our kinship full of fathoming,
fish guts of a carnal lot
disappointed with its view.
My busy hands were making beds,
pressing lumps in pillow cubes,
bothering with miniscule.
In August heat of knowing
quickly shrinking hour,
my mind went back to planting spells.
The way she dug a hole for roots
as if they were an artery.
When she laughed and snorted dirt,
her nostrils looked like daffodils.

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