Beautyberry

 

How much I love the way

               I find you: ramble-leafed,

overgrown. Your histories

                              twine through the deadnettle, 

bird skulls. I pocket your tenderness,

            your bundle of stars, your ruby 

stain. The weather grows cold. 

What love is left

in you for me? Purpled grief

            already wilting

in my hands. Little amethyst 

                    jewels in the forestlight, burst

of bitterness on my tongue. You,

        my summer’s last scrap,

martyred in my palm. 

Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the 2012 Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Auchter’s recent work appears in The Huffington Post, CNN, Crab Creek Review, The West Review, The Indianapolis Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Project. She lives in Houston, TX.

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