My sister retreats to the vanishing point.
       

My father sleeps, diminished, in the foreground.
I navigate the vacancy between them like

an iridescent beetle, trapped
between the window and the screen.
Scanning the horizon for its origin.

Progress idles in fluorescent
revolutions like the ceiling fan.
Locked in a cage of days.

Stale drone of August.
Clouds orbit. Light blurs.
I flick the desiccated ornament away.

He hovers above a puddle of blood.
She hollows the bones of the birds.

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Copyright © 2017 Christine Gardiner All rights reserved
from My Sister's Father
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission