D. Dina Friedman

Feeding My Wanting

I’m hoping for healing, for the sun to slice its light
on the overcast world, I’m hoping this wind,
fierce enough to knock down a body,
can tornado the voice lying cold in the lungs.
I’m hoping the baby, looking in the mirror,
will smile at himself again, that his angry skin
might cool like a river, once we find the right salve.
I’m hoping for salves and salvation
and vacation and a murmuration
of starlings to remind me: yes, I have come home
to roost. I’m hoping for roosters crowing
like they once crowed that long-ago morning,
waking me from my roof in a ghetto in Mexico.
I’m hoping all the world’s rooftops can be safe
from snipers, vipers; I’m hoping for drumming.
Thrumming. Humming, for all these hem
and haw times to morph into shiny threads,
a needlepoint tapestry of calm. A psalm.

D. Dina Friedman has published in over a hundred literary journals and anthologies (including Rattle, Salamander, The Sun, The Ekphrastic Review, and Rhino) and received four Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the author of two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), a short-story collection: Immigrants (Creators Press), and two chapbooks: Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press) and Here in Sanctuary—Whirling (Querencia Press). Visit her website www.ddinafriedman.com or her blog on living creatively in a creatively challenged universe at https://ddinafriedman.substack.com.