restoration

i have been working to restore
the glistening edge of dew
on the newly minted leaves.

and ensure that the sunset will spill onto
the horizon even longer than ever
in the past, before "the event."

i will beseech the inconsolate
to curl up under the quilt of moonbeams
and sleep deeply,
dreaming of their lost loved ones
as if they were still breathing.

let the silver coins that were placed there
drop away from every set of eyelids.
let the plague doctor hear only silence
when he shouts "bring out the bodies!"
for when i am crowned queen of lost causes,
i will bring back the dead.

ryki zuckerman is the author of the full-length volume, Looking for Bora Bora (Saddle Road Press, Hawai'i, 2013), and seven chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Black Mountain College II Review, Slipstream, Steel Bellow, Lips, Paterson Literary Review, and other journals, and online at anti-heroin chic, Nixes Mate Review, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Moondance, and poetrysuperhighway. She is a co-editor of Earth's Daughters magazine, the feminist literary arts periodical, in its 50th year. She curates the Literary Café at Center for Inquiry reading series in the Buffalo, NY area.

** First published in The Buffalo News