Karen Elizabeth Sharpe

Firmament’s Crack

Frost fissures erupted
across the field.

Sod turned itself over
smell of dank earth.

But the firecracker
zinnias kept blooming.

Head in the stars. Our pain
was the best kind of invisible.

When frost took the rest
of the garden down to dead

you covered it in leaf mulch
as if this year was the same

as any other.

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Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review. Her chapbook, Prayer Can Be Anything, is forthcoming in the summer of 2023 (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have or will soon appear in Split Rock Review, Ocean State Review, West Trade Review, Mom Egg Review and Catalyst, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Karen has been a member of Marge Piercy's juried poets group and a member of the PoemWorks community in the greater Boston area.