Red
by Laura Cherry,
winning poetry entry for the Flashes Ekphrastic Challenge
It started with the hair, a faint singeing smell
floating from the bed where we lay
flung and murmuring. Then a bolt
through my temple that spun me upright
and down the hall to press my cheek
against cool tile. Next, finding my clothes,
swallowing fire that crept rib by rib
to my belly, my hips, to all the soft parts
that had opened to you, the legs that ached
carrying me down the stairs. It missed
the cold lips that kissed you at the door,
the ears that caught whatever you said last.
About the author
Laura Cherry is the author of the collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books) and the chapbooks Two White Beds (Minerva Rising) and What We Planted (Providence Athenaeum). She co-edited the anthology Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press) with Robert Hartwell Fiske, and her work has been published in journals including Antiphon, Ekphrastic Review, Los Angeles Review, Cider Press Review, and Hartskill Review. She earned an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She works as a technical writer and lives near Boston with her son and their cats.
