Concrete

I am sewing holes in photographs,
shaped like uniforms,
fragile and dark:
effigies with seams
in unlikely
panels.

That red dress now firmly bound
with a pair of pants on a man
I’ll never know,
a hat that was torn
in my flight
so many years
after your picture was taken,
with netting we’d both repaired

a gap

in intimacy, the barrier of
memory buried under the concrete
of skin and bone and brain,
a sewing machine’s rich sound,
filling me up when the concrete
begins to fail,
a protective measure.

I keep sewing, aunt to tree,
corduroys to a face,
lake to sidewalk,
I am keeping my concrete in place,
repouring as I think of other things.

Kendra Preston Leonard is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. Her chapbook Making Mythology was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her work has appeared in vox poetica, lunch, The Waggle, and Lily Poetry Review, among other venues. Her novella-in-verse Protectress, about the gorgons in the modern world, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2022. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on new operas and songs. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD or visit her site at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/.