Quilts
by Jane Springer

“Remembering Lewis”
by J. Gerald Kennedy

Little Deaths
by Barbara Lau

Quilts
    Jane Springer

Six siblings and two parents
divided by one man’s wage
equals two rooms and three beds.
My father slept between his
brothers and his father’s razor
strap. Some summers he slept
in his uncle’s bathtub where
his eighteen-year-old aunt asked
where he would like to touch.
My mother slept in a field when
the boards of her house swelled;
there were no electric fans
on tobacco farms in Kentucky
then. Her sheets lilted over
her body with each June wind.
After they married, our parents
slept under quilts their own
mothers patched from discarded
clothes, and so their families never
left them alone: But here,
a brother’s sleeve would reach
across their twin-breathed chests
as though to pass salt over a
crowded table. The dead never
do keep their hands to themselves—
and even stillborns’
empty hems cradled their toes.