Barbara Daniels

This Is the End

The end of growth, the end
of a spider that streaks
from the empty leg

of my jeans, lifted just now
to a hook on a door.
We shall be burned away

like a black star.
This is the end
of mortification of the flesh,

an end to the soft folds
of every body.
The end of windows

curtained with lace. I will
no more smell the decaying
pages of books

nor will there be lilies,
sneakers, lemonade. No winter
leaves, those looped fingers

of white oaks scuffed
on a pathway. Nothing
now will be tethered here.

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Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Lake Effect, Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.