Danielle Pieratti

Mothers of Boys

Already a sepia photograph’s secretly acrid
with its unknowing.

Your body’s a dinghy-sized aperture
scouring the ocean floor, a migrant
that worries the sea.

A boy’s body’s a sailful of stars.

But the ocean’s an unfriendly
keep unmoved by your losing.           

And his skin’s the color of moon.

And all snow’s the color of grieving.

And his fingers are plums whose flesh
you would bloom with your lips.

And his skin’s the color of dates.

We just blurry the glass
with our breathing. My hands:

what petty substitutes for scars.

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Danielle Pieratti's first book, Fugitives (2016, Lost Horse Press), was selected by Kim Addonizio for the 2016 Idaho Prize and won the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for poetry. She is the author of two chapbooks: By the Dog Star, 2005 winner of the Edda Chapbook Competition for Women (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and The Post, the Cage, the Palisade, published by Dancing Girl Press in 2015. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Paris Review, Boston Review, Words Without Borders, Mid-American Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut.