Laura Ann Reed Verse-Virtual April 2023

April 2023

Laura Ann Reed
lagreed@frontier.com / lauraannreedpoet.com

Author's Note: I found the pantoum form to be magically suited to writing “To a Sister I Didn’t Know”, a piece that is essentially the saying and singing of an ancient story in my history: the death of a day-old sibling. The repeated lines in this form mimic the way the mind grapples, over a long period of time, with issues it can never quite make sense of. And the fact that these repeating lines occur throughout the pantoum in juxtaposition with different lines also parallels the workings of memory: We remember a haunting or troubling event again and again, but never in exactly the same emotional or ideational context.

Child Fears, 1956


Jellyfish. Egg whites. False teeth.
Undertows. Mean kids. Bomb drills.
The neighbors’ dog that bit off my kitten’s head.
Old T.V. newsreels of Nazis. Polio. 
My aunt with the goiter and bulging eyes.
Snakes on the fire trail. Bobcats in the canyon.
Bees in the grass. Cat poop in the sandbox.
Walk-in closets. Rip tides. The circus.
My grandfather’s open coffin.
The flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.
Mussorgsky’s The Night on Bald Mountain.
Pictures of missing children on milk cartons.
The shadow of my hand on the wall.
Falling into the hole they dug for my grandfather.

Originally published in ONE ART

To a Sister I Didn’t Know


At three, I watched, helpless, as our mother’s belly swelled.
I’d lie in bed, casting spells, singing hymns of disappearance.
Who could know you’d have curls the shade of ripe apricots,
that your death would feel like accusation, indictment.

I’d lie in bed, casting spells, singing hymns of disappearance,
and was later told you only lived a day, less than allotted to a fly.
I didn’t know your death would feel like accusation, indictment,
that I’d dream of an orange kitten dying on a cyclone fence.

I was later told you only lived a day, less than allotted to a fly.
I want to say your absence feels like an unopened love letter,
that I dream of an orange kitten dying on a cyclone fence.
Now, from windows, I wave to a neighbor’s flame-haired girl.

I want to say your absence feels like an unopened love letter,
that the streaks of fire in our father’s beard bring you home.
Now, from windows, I wave to a neighbor’s flame-haired girl.
This making safety in the moment. This fishing in air.

How the streaks of fire in our father’s beard bring you home.
Who could know you’d have curls the shade of ripe apricots.
This making safety in the moment. This fishing in air.
At three, I watched, helpless, as our mother’s belly swelled.

Originally published in MacQueen’s Quinterly