Christina Ranon

Seed of the lightning bolus
plows tender furrows in the winter air.

white staccato drumbeats
slap a honeyed sunset into retreat

and in the early wet,
leaves cling to footprints on the doormat,

timid shapes
stirring a maelstrom of black currant memories:
the full-limbed flavor of blood cherries, and you

unraveling magnolias in the champagne darkness.

Christina Ranon's short fiction and poetry have been published in the Minetta Review, State of the Arts, Celebration, Stirring, and Many Mountains Moving (forthcoming). She has had a play performed by the Florida Studio Theatre and has been chosen to read at NYU's Creative Writing Colloquium.