Tracy Artson is a Bay Area poet and licensed psychologist whose poems explore intersectional themes of social justice, climate crises, the human capacity for transformation as well as grief and yearning. Professionally, she works with complex and single-incident traumas. Other passions include guitar, songwriting and studio art. https://tracyartsonpsychologist.com

From ‘This Rough Terrain’

I.

Is it possible to love a person you have never met?
my ten-year-old daughter asks, forestalling sleep.
She looks for answers in corrugated cardboard
boxes relegated to dustbin corners. Spectral residues
linger. Did you know sloughed-off skin is a kind
of dust bunny, honey? And, comet crashes boom
stardust earthbound? Planetary and mortal specks
oxygenate her pinkish spongy lungs. Cosmic sprinkles
dust a grandfather’s birthday cake. Make a wish and blow.
Alternate times, parallel lines aerate and harvest seeds
pogroms and pomegranates grow in the same virgin soil.
Its people are thin, transparent arils of red juice, you swallow
his yarns and Chinese snuff bottles insulate the empty void.
Olfactory traces of fatherless faces: brew of mildew
and aftershave scents his Hanes cotton-tee, 1950s style.
A dapper teen leans against a skylark, teeth gleam.
Frozen in sepia dreams. Torn edges.
My why child prances down jagged sidewalks
carrying admixtures of fact and fantasy.