Lindsay Kellar-Madsen

While I clean the kitchen

demons fumble in drawers and debris.
A brood of elastics splits open and gives up
a memory—my father driving the lawn mower

over a pregnant garter snake.
Like gravity, my sister and I fall into the wake
of his shadow. The small, yellow stripes wriggle

free from their mother’s cold ribbons—
a soft mess is left in neat grass
behind the steady purr of sharp blades.

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Lindsay Kellar-Madsen writes compulsively in rare sleeves of time. She lives in the Danish countryside with her husband and four children, who only wear shoes when necessary. Her poems live with Humana Obscura, Porkbelly Press and Snapdragon Journal. Her latest children's book is Meet the Wild (Little Otter Press, 2023).