Confession — Blackbird Archive

← v14n2, Fall 2015

I wash and wash

your little blue blanket

while my mother rocks you

and you grow hungry

while I wash the blue

blanket and my mother

warms the bottle

and feeds you while I wash

the little blue blanket,

pouring the Ivory liquid

into the warm water

and watching it flow

and dissolve, my hands, too,

dissolving in the water,

and you grow sleepy

while my mother holds you

and when you wake

she rocks you

and when you scream

she holds you

while I wash and wash

the blue blanket because

the little blue blanket

never seems to come clean.

family childhood grief

Dannye Romine Powell

Dannye Romine Powell is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Nobody Calls Me Darling Anymore (Press 53, 2015). Her 1994 collection, At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home , won the First Book Award from the University of Arkansas Press. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Magazine , Birmingham Arts Journal , Southern Poetry Review , Harvard Review Online , and 32 Poems , among others. She has received fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She writes about books and authors for the Charlotte Observer . Photo by Alyssa Romine