Tilted
head, right arm
behind the back, fingers
curled around the left arm’s inner
elbow
 
as if
holding her own
soft self together, or
taking her own pulse. Skin. Clouds.  
Braces.
 
Smiling
on a French road,
seventeen, a year before
her death. Tilted head angling
toward
 
some blue
corner of the sky, 
patched with white clouds, thin
line of skin between shirt and jeans,
hips wide
 
as if
having given
birth already, tilted
hips, and, beside them, dangling, her
left hand
 
open
fingers stretching
upward, as if holding
the warm day delicately
open.

J.D. Scrimgeour is the author of the poetry collections The Last Miles and Territories, and he won the AWP Award for Nonfiction for Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he released Ogunquit & Other Works, a CD blending music and poetry. His third poetry collection, Lifting the Turtle (Turning Point), will appear in November 2017.