Revenant

She offers a palm, cradles baby carrots
Damp earth clings
to the roots. Her babushka
an ambush of roses
from the Russia
my grandmother fled
a town I can’t pronounce

It’s the same each time
I can’t find the car
My keys are brass knuckles
Grandmother must be waiting

My grandmother is a fish
swimming out of her own watery
heart. There/not there/there again

I take the carrots. For the world that ended
Take small bites. Swallow the earth.

Babo Kamel's poems have appeared in literary reviews in the US, Australia, and Canada. These include Painted Bride Quarterly, Abyss & Apex, The Greensboro Review, Cleaver, The Grolier Poetry Prize Annual, Contemporary Verse 2, Rust +Moth, Mobius, The Journal of Social Change, and 2River Review. She was a winner of The Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize and is a three-time Pushcart nominee. Her chapbook, After, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press. Find her at: babokamel.com