After Les Trois Ombres, 1886, Auguste Rodin,
Plaster, Bronze
foreheads falling together on the curb
Not quite a prayer circle the needles
lay littered, Chick-fil-A styrofoam cups
dance semi-circles between feet some
shoed some toes exposed from greyed
socks I sniff for the stench of days old
urine on cloth smelling only syrup thick
yellow honey heaviness tree pollen whipped
lighter as four p.m. descends on a breeze
carrying contagions, The Three on the nod
from too much junk slowing labored lungs
still as cut bronze heads and shoulders
hung so lowly so lost in Sister Morphine’s
seductive dose depressing respiration
The Three Shades barely breathing surrender
one battle, one corner—CoVID, the Queen,
burns through the streets with her World War.
Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018) and Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Dark Matter, Chagrin River Review, Foliate Oak, Gravel, Crab Fat Magazine, Gravitas, Atlas + Alice, Joey & the Black Boots, The Write Launch, Cordella, FLARE the Flagler Review, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket.