LatinosUSA

Chacking jackdaws
form a mourning circle.

I kneel, laying hands
on her broken torso,
breathing in her heart-shaped leaves’
faint scent of balsam,
stroking fissures and burrs
on her bark, which outlasted
two queens, a bracken fungus attack,
both world wars, the lightning strike
which pruned her.

Someone takes a picture
as they are passing.
I wonder if they know
this female hybrid
was the last of her kind.
My daughter said fairies
lived in her branches.

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Sam Szanto is an award-winning, Pushcart prize-nominated writer from Durham (UK). Her poetry pamphlets ‘This Was Your Mother’ and ‘Splashing Pink’ – a 2023 Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice – were published by Dreich Press and Hedgehog Press respectively; her short-story collection ‘If No One Speaks’ by Alien Buddha Press. She is working on a practice-led PhD on the poetry of parenthood at York St John University.

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Poetry Editor Francisco Bravo Cabrera invites you to submit your poetry and to collaborate with LatinosUSA (English Edition) and also LatinosUSA (Spanish Edition if you write in Spanish). Respond to ArribaPamplona@gmail.com with the text attached and a brief bio/pic as you so desire.

Image by and property of Francisco Bravo Cabrera/All Rights Reserved

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