Parnassus
On Monday there is rain,
a mother wilts next to me,
smokes Marlboros while
we wait for our children
to flee from the school
and into our bellies.
The red hair is from her father,
she says,
doubting the seed.
My daughter drags her coat
on a willowy arm
and asks me when
I will die.
When I’m done twisting,
I say,
When the final winter
buries me in white
and hides
the bitter root.
Jessica Calvert
Jessica Calvert is an MFA candidate at Mississippi University for Women, was the lead fiction editor for Ponder Review, and a fiction editor for Black Fork Review. She has been published in Aurora (2012, 2019) and other publications. She lives in Indiana with her husband and what she thinks are kids, but might be aliens. She enjoys reading, writing, and playing with her dogs Kylo and Grimm.