Ronda Piszk Broatch

We watch as apples fall into the mouths of horses

and somewhere in the blackberry brambles a bear
knocks jeweled wet fruit into her own maw.

It’s hard, Horse tells me, this dying season, wingtips
brushing his cheek like whiskers, awareness

bruising my wrist as I trip, another angel diving
beneath me, her arms parentheses within which

I land in my startlement. Out here a Steller’s Jay
blazes blue in the lilac bush, tells us it’s okay 

to wander a while, astonished. We round up
stories, stashing them in Horse’s saddle bags; later

I worry those stories when night goes torrential.
When silence burns, the blanket beneath our heads

a reliquary for vanishing mothers, the dreams
of apples and bears sweet between our teeth.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize and Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press). One of Ronda’s current manuscripts was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize, the Word Works Tenth Gate Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize, and she is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Winner of the Willow Springs Surrealist Poetry Prize and the Cloud Bank Poetry Prize, Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Fugue and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is an MFA graduate of the Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop. In her spare time, she is a photographer, digital artist and cat herder.