My Mother Taught Me to Feed the Sky

by Greg Hughes

After Clinton-Khile Brägger

I am four and there are no ducks to feed. Their southbound séance ending. The faint ripple of flying v’s like steam drifting from my mother’s kitchen. Clouds shift, opening like empty hands. My mother sees me looking out the window, tiny breath pulsing against the glass. What will it eat? I ask, as if the sky is merely hungry. As if I can give it something to satiate its appetite. Do you hear it ask? my mother replies, her canary apron streaked with red. Garlic writhes in oil, in slick heat. After thirty years, the dream always ends differently. Sometimes, my mother comes from the kitchen, opens the window, lifts me as high as her arms will go. I feel weightless, like the echo of her voice in a long hallway. Other times, she stays, and I wait long enough to see a wall of rain approaching. The glitter of grey as it comes for me. I wake to the smell of tomatoes and basil bubbling on low. My stomach, hollow. A rain cloud with nowhere to go.

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Greg Hughes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and nonprofit marketing consultant based in Redondo Beach, California. His work has appeared in Rattle, Only Poems, Crab Apple Review, and After Happy Hour Review. He holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase. More of his work can be found at www.bygreghughes.com.