Emily Hockaday is a Queens-based poet and editor. Her newest chapbook, Beach Vocabulary, is forthcoming from Red Bird Chaps. She is author of Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide (Zoo Cake Press), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press), and Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, most recently Newtown Literary, The Maine Review, and Salt Hill. She is associate editor of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction, and she can be found on web at http://www.emilyhockaday.com and @E_Hockaday.
~~~~~
Ghazal
Easter has passed, and in Brooklyn the Cherry Blossom
Festival approaches. Trees in Forest Park unfurl tiny blossoms.
The season is deceptively mild. On the kitchen table, the arm of sunny
forsythia distracts me from the awkward silence that’s blossomed
after we verbalize my brother’s suicide attempt. It had
to be brought up. Petals from overripe blossoms
scatter the lawn below the Mock Orange bush, wafting
heavy perfume through the window. Love blossoms
within me, inextricable from grief. I know it’s hard
to reach out and say I am hurting. Like a blossom,
he is bright, delicate, sensitive to changing weather patterns.
We all have finite seasons, even Emily, even these fresh Spring blossoms.
~~~~~
ISACOUSTIC* 
Reblogged this on kingsoftrain.
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