Poetry by Pam Sinicrope

     Dan Finnen CC




Nocturne with a Peregrine Falcon

Another night bracketed with pain.
Should I abandon sleep’s helium balloon,

untie from the dream where I unhinge 
the hingeless door. Never have I wanted 

more to travel out-of-skin, as a moon dog 
rings and the yard keens with silent wind 

chimes: roadkill strung from branches 
for raptors to feast. My scapulas twitch to fly, 

to join the sky of trees. I feel the falcon’s heart,
its belly filled with songbirds’ bones. 

Feathered. Fearless. I want to fold 
and fall midair into epiphany

and knock it from the dark--
but desire is shipwrecked at my throat.

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It’s Your Choice

to unfasten your lungs,
to breathe gentler air beneath 

despair, to fill every branching alveoli
like the whispering trees—to feel

crisp winter and glacier your wounds,
to lose time’s cusp and find

a ten-point buck in moon glow,

to witness how snowflakes stumble
then stitch, lost until fixed

in a blossom of ice—to behold 
the Northern Lights, to wolf-wail sorrows

to the inscrutable haze. To rest. 
To breathe. To take another breath.

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Favorites

At the funeral home, they asked,
“What was your mother’s favorite color?”

My sister, father, and I fell silent. 
Images roared.

               “I don’t play favorites,” Mom always said
               when asked which one of us she liked 
               best. Because love is indivisible, we split 

               the bracelets and earrings she left
               bedside. Did I want her Apple watch, 
               the one EMTs placed in a Ziploc? 

               Grief likes an impossible question, 
               an answer that strips the seams 
               of your favorite black dress.

               I still hear her sewing machine
               serging invincible threads, see her 
               blue eyes in the bathroom mirror.

               My sister and I held vigil 
               in the closet that smelled like her--
               Coco Mademoiselle. Mom became 

                the crumpled tissue on the chair, the jewel-
                toned jacket from Talbots; 
                and the leather one with silver studs, 
                her favorite gift from me--

                I took it home. We found her metal 
                in boxes and drawers. I slipped 
                Mom’s wedding band on my sister’s finger--

and finally—in response, Dad broke open 
his deep green eyes.

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Pam Sinicrope has an MFA from Augsburg University and a doctorate in public health. Some of her work can be found in SWWIM, Spillway, Feral, The Night Heron Barks, Aethlon, Appalachian Journal, and 3 Elements Review, among others. Pam lives in Rochester, MN, where she works as a medical writer and is a senior poetry editor for RockPaperPoem.
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