Fishers of Men

Excerpt from Fishers of Men:

The Last Photograph

In the small photograph

my mother has her eyes closed.

I am shapeless, rather pale

probably two. There is snow.

My sister has a sled.

It is only a year before

my mother will abandon me

to be beaten, brainwashed.

For years I was sure that

she despised that shapeless creature

until I looked carefully

and realized I’d been buried in the snow

up to the armpits.

She was sitting there, eyes closed

that thing that had been her daughter

already a part of the landscape,

her mind already gone.