Carrie Sloan

Audrey

tells us that the girl in the refrigerator

is sticking out her tongue, we quickly

close the door, assuring her the girl is gone.

Later that evening there are a dozen more

children in the living room, some have guns,

the others wear menacing smiles promising

to do Audrey harm.

Slowly the past returns, nothing is left

of the present, in the morning she must

milk the cow in the back yard, chickens

need tending and younger brothers and sisters,

most of them long dead, must be readied

for school. Audrey is only agitated

if you tell the year or that her baby

died in its sleep some forty years before.

One year later we visit Audrey

in the private room she now calls home, her eyes

do not focus and she looks younger than

her seventy-five years, she no longer speaks

in coherent patterns, tied to the bed she sings

the songs of her people, calling them to her,

she awaits rescue.