1.
Daddy

In
his last photos
he
looked unhappy
cutting
the thick dry ham

For
Thanksgiving
he
sat alone
eating
in the snow
under
the crow’s irritating call

He
should have posed
for
another picture
on
another day

Instead
he
took the chair
to
the park
and
someone snapped the camera

2.
Landscape Photo, Part 1

Snow
resting on tree limbs
an
effortless balance

3.
Mama’s Photo

Breathe
her photograph

She’s
waiting for someone
light
encased
her
skin cropped to the moon

Feel
her exterior
the
outer body shell
cleavage
powdered

She’s
cinnamon
she
slips between the eyes

4.
Daughter’s Photo

She
wanted to see
her
pictures
days
of a youthful black child’s
Sophia
Loren beauty

Black
and white dresses
translucent
skin
unassuming
eyes
She
was a beautiful child
doing
what a child is supposed to do
pull
beauty out from under her mother’s inner thigh
wear
it to spite the mother

Saying
“Look
what I took from you
when
I came out of your womb”

When
she cried
her
mother would say
“See
that face?”

It’s
been a tug of war ever since

Her
mother won
when
she kept the pictures 

5.
The Landscape Photo, Part 2

Heat
chased
by fire hydrants
thunder
clouds

One
tree makes waves
struggling
to uproot
wanting
to run too

6.
A Close Up of Daddy

The
smooth color of skin
no
visible ending

|||

A blues poet and a 2018 Pushcart nominee, Vida Cross’s book of poetry, Bronzeville at Night:1949, debuted in 2017. She is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including Through this Door: Wisconsin in Poems, MilwaukeeNoir, Wising Up Anthology: Creativity and Constraint and Cave Canem Anthology XII.

Vida Cross is a past TLR contributor. Her work has also appeared in TLR’s Refrigerator Mothers Issue.