Vernita Hall
Tanka Trilogy: Orchids in a Time of Siege
Jisei — A death poem
All the plants I’ve killed
you gift me frail white orchids
on my last birthday
*
Water zealot, I
baptize her dailysoon mourn
those first fallen blooms
*
Sheltering in place
this time—what blossoms between
us nowmight save one
—Submitted on 05/13/2020
Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize for Poetry and of the Robert Creeley Prize from Marsh Hawk Press; and The Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians (Moonstone Press, 2017), winner of the Moonstone Chapbook Contest. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, African American Review, American Literary Review, Atlanta Review, and Mezzo Cammin, among other journals and anthologies. With fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center and Ucross, Hall holds an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College and serves on the poetry review board of Philadelphia Stories.
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