Poetry by Sherre Vernon

             ​ Daniel Rothamel CC



A Streetlight Lullaby
a villanelle 

Outside the bowling alley, 1979,
we wait for them to count the pins,
my mama, her mama. Her mama and mine

promise a star through the Oregon pines
before the morning shift begins,
outside the bowling alley, 1979.

She’s thirteen, I’m two at the time,
though they dress us up like twins,
my mama, her mama. Her mama and mine

have left their children behind,
in the pickup. Night descends
outside the bowling alley, 1979.

It’s the only sitter she can find:
the concrete and her sister’s skin,
my mama. Her mama, her mama. And mine

comes to the window and reaches in –
but we sleep as the long hours thin
Outside the bowling alley, 1979:
my mama, her mama – her mama and mine.



​

​The World

forty years I’ve wandered

two plus one is three—at three: 
innocent, at seven: broken, 
by twenty-one: aflame

by Saturn, I said, I am the teacher
and the teacher I became.  I said, 
I am the dancer, and raised
an ankle over my knee--

and my belly swelled around
your soul—your pulse saying
all is well, all is--

I have never been
at ease in Georgia’s flowers, 
layers of petals, open
their pinks and purples
to the world

but serpents, I understand
and in the garland of scales, head
eating tale, I can play
the horsemen and the saints--

lion, ox, eagle, man: and the light
of your name in white 
laurels and bows of cedar​

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​

Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the author two award-winning chapbooks: Green Ink Wings (fiction) and The Name is Perilous (poetry). Her work has nominated for Best of the Net and anthologized in several collections, including Bending Genres and Best Small Fictions. In 2019, Sherre was a Parent-Writer Fellow at MVICW. Readers describe her work as heartbreaking, richly layered, lyrical and intelligent. To read more of her work visit www.sherrevernon.com/publications and tag her into conversation @sherrevernon.

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