Sally Rosen Kindred — “August, 1975”


August, 1975

The month before you knew for good how first grade tasted. The month
your father and mother flew over an ocean–their first–and left you
in a small blowup pool in the yard. When you hoped blowup meant air
from the babysitter’s mouth. When she sang Someone Saved Her Life
tonight and her long sun-hair swung like a life which could fall  
out of a flying thing on fire, down to a sea so gray-wide and mean
no God could breathe out a firm world around it. Of course,
she let you drink Coke and keep the bathroom light.
Of course they came back across the sky, they said, from a giant Clock
that told a different time, gave them daylight when you’d been small
in your bed. The dog ran down your street before they did.
The babysitter saw him first. Dusk. Blowup could mean silver wings in flames.
What do you have in your mouth? she asked the dog. August’s mouth
was hot. Something’s inside there. Let’s get it out. 


Sally Rosen Kindred is the author of three poetry collections: No EdenBook of Asters, and most recently Where the Wolf, which won the Diode Editions Book Prize and the Jacar Press Julie Suk Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review OnlinePleiadesPlumeShenandoah, and New Ohio Review. She teaches workshops online through The Poetry Barn.