DC Poet: Sarah Browning

Names she tried to teach me

Sibilant forsythia, hard-ringed dogwood,

     and this vine: red bead bursting from

yellow sheathing; autumn’s surprise

     she gathered to grace the mantelpiece,

to twine our hearts to hers. I’ve lost

     the name: Bright morning? Mustard

joy? Harvest noon? Burnt breakfast?

     Wandering winter jewel?

Spotting the red and yellow

     caught in November’s edge-of-field

bramble catches me. I could not love

     her enough. Tangle of guilt, bramble

of no name. It comes a few days later:
     bittersweet.



  Sarah Browning is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology, she is the recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, a Creative Communities Initiative grant, and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. She has been guest editor or co-edited special issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Delaware Poetry Review, and POETRY magazine.