Poetry from Shoshana Lovett-Graff

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Afterwards

i provide anew to my grandmother’s flesh
she was sifted finely on me but it did not stick

i was moldy and speckled already by dank water
lapping the edges of her composure, quiet

run through with whispers, and after
the truth was told, there remained some vertigo

when no one could remember who was first
and who was third, who was the second removed

as my mother was displaced from her blood
and replaced in later years with words that

made the silence so eagerly upheld
virtuous and modern: adopted

call me what you want, the child of a child
still whistling for her mother, or whimpering

a playing card tossed out between two decks
i remain a child half at ease

to the name given, or the name unknown
.

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Shoshana Lovett-Graff is a writer from New Haven, CT. Her poetry has previously been published in Blink-Ink, The East Coast Literary Review, Poetica, and Durable Goods.