Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four young children. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lucid Rhythms, Snakeskin, The Poetry Porch: Sonnet Scroll, Pirene’s Fountain, Boston Literary Magazine, and Annals of Internal Medicine.
Winter 2009
Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 4
Poetry Translations Non-Fiction Fiction Reviews
Tracey Gratch
The Morning After
I know the sound of a fist striking flesh
In the night, through a bedroom door shut tight.
And her quiet, tearful pleading – no, no,
No. No bruises, just internal bleeding.
Eating a breakfast of anguish at a
Round, faux-wood Formica table. Cupboards
Stocked with terror. I kept my heart in an
Avocado green refrigerator.
Safe from the simmering pot on the stove,
To soon boil over, even unprovoked.
I’d quietly rinse my cereal bowl,
Take my game-face from the closet, and go.
Mornings--- she swept spent ashes of rage. Steeped
Guilt in a tea cup, and sipped it away.
© Tracey Gratch
