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  • Vera
  • Tori Sharpe (bio)

I can still picture the black shoes of my great aunt—     her muscular legs, no ankles to speak of—planted firmly          in the grass behind her house. Some Sundays after church,

my sister and I made the long drive with our parents to see her.     No children of her own, no grandchildren, my mother would say          on the way, as if hers was a loneliness we could ease, or undo.

After iced tea, always set out before we arrived,     my great aunt would send my sister and me running          through the backyard around her, as she stood, fixed

in one place, casting her arms this way and that,     trying to catch us running by, reaching for an elbow,          the back of a knee, reaching to grasp us squealing, not wanting

to be caught, held tight and kissed. We laughed, my sister and I,     and ran, and eventually forgot those Sunday afternoons,          as Vera got older and sicker, as they all do—

those great aunts, those neighbors and distant cousins,     those old women who leave brief memories, the faintest smell          of powder, their hands as strong as men’s, grasping for us as we run. [End Page 337]

Tori Sharpe

TORI SHARPE’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southwest Review, Blackbird, Southern Humanities Review, Plieades, Tar River Poetry, and the Louisville Review. She is currently a doctoral fellow at the University of North Texas and on faculty at Southern Methodist University.

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