Poetry By Sharon Coleman

Carl Wykoff CC




dear anita


                                                                                                                                                                                           sunday 16 august

pale orange gladiolas with red throats are so hardy that they took themselves from the backyard to the front—one then two then ten—to flirt wordlessly with pandemic walktakers. so many green stems weighed over by five or six orange blooms. now they bend to the sidewalk, away from the shade of the camilia whose rusty falling flowers are hardly pink anymore. who am i, more observer than gardener. hard camilia buds turn tawny in the dusty soil. walktakers trample or pick the gladiola hearts, and i put what survives in a vase, enjoy them heartily, quietly and think of the circles of blooming silence around you, anita. and of our grandmother’s roses, twining sunward again after being completely cut off.  


dear anita

                                                                                                                                                                                            tuesday 18 august

we became islands long before the world encircled each person with a virus. it left us all stranded to measure the echoes bouncing from silenced walls against the tranquility within them. a place to weave memory’s beads into an intricate solitude. the fighting exhausts itself out there. my fingers are tapping along the same constellation of letters as yours. walls and windows into the nightsky let me think for a moment too. thirty-two miles between our walls. A few yards between neighbors. the islands of our ancestors know isolation and connections aren’t strung on threads that never touch—they’re what pulls us out to the stars that revolve in different ways for everyone. 


dear anita

                                                                                                                                                                         monday 24 august 

there’s a lot of what I don’t want to inherit either. my bed sleeps over small boxes of clay shaped in our mother’s hands. cupboards with stacked and crammed dishes. engraved wine glasses so delicate i’m afraid to drink from—even though mom always did, and she dipped a finger in the wine and ran it around the rim until a musical note hushed the table.  i’ll grow old alone surrounded by older things. it’s the dust that collects that I sneeze at, not the gravel of our father’s voice that asked about you in his last days, that his wishes for you be met by your wishes. they’re waiting. 



​Sharon Coleman is a fifth generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots. She curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and is the president of the board for Bay Area Poetry.  Her books include Paris Blinks, micro-fiction and Half Circle, poetry. She received the Maverick Award from the ruth weiss Foundation. She teaches creative writing and poetry at Berkeley City College. www.sharoncolemanpoetry.com.
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