Katherine Hagopian Berry
Mother Cauldron
I have ignored you
tucked my broom in the hall closet,
sickled the sock drawer
my wands for rolling pins
my cards for games.
You must find a desert for me,
sunbaked and steep
a dry rock river, a flowtide forever,
I am your arroryo daughter, never and sideways
there is no container I won’t upset
so wandering jew, so pothos, so valley lily, so spider, so fern.
I have never in my life cut a rosebush back
and no matter which color I think I am choosing
everything always blooms yellow
which might be charm enough to unblind
these tortoiseshell eyes,
might be potion enough
to let me pass unseen,
grayhair, firebreath, cronespeak, oracle
all of it you might just dismiss,
I might just deny.
But some nights, can’t you taste it?
Outside your closed window
everything calls out?
You could ride it if you let yourself.
You could spread your arms, unpestle the clouds
turn the bowl of your body upside down and let the crows rewing you
eat and eat and eat and eat.
Katherine Hagopian Berry (she/her) is the author of Mast Year (Littoral Books 2020), LandTrust (NatureCulture, 2022) and Orbit (Toad Hall Editions, 2023). Katherine has appeared in literary magazines including Café Review, SWWIM, and Feral, in the Portland Press Herald, on Maine NPR and in multiple anthologies.