by Liz Dolan
Ads for black and white
Chanel pumps,$575; a Coach
patchwork handbag, $428, beneath her photo.
Like a spider her black abaya
slips tendrils around
her nine daughters yawning and curling
at her feet, her husband and sons
Falah and Salah all shot. Ali,12,
too tired to work slept in the bed
of the truck they had to push
to start, two bullets in his hairless chest.
"I made them breakfast, rice and sauce,"
she said, keening, brushing her hands across
her face. "Saw the washing
of their bodies. So handsome,
so handsome...."
A Pushcart nominee in fiction and poetry, Liz Dolan has also received a poetry fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts. Liz has published poems, memoir and short stories in New Delta Review, Rattle, Harpweaver, Mudlark, and Natural Bridge, among others. She has also been published in the following anthologies: The Farmer’s Daughter, Wicked Alice, Philadelphia Stories and the upcoming Delaware Anthology. Liz was recently accepted as an associate artist in residence with Sharon Olds at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and invited to become a member of the poetry board of Philadelphia Stories.