California Poppy

For you, we name the world: Apple. Fire truck. Sadness. Life. And when you ask, so eagerly you ask, we can’t always answer. We know there are holes where the words you want should be. We have no tongue for the tides or the subtle seasons, though we try. We are learning alongside of you—the native plants, the baffling weather. Still, there is one flower we can’t help but know by name, its brightness breaks through any tired city day, a sign of spring in the cracks of the cement, in the deep holes of our longing for home.









Sarah Kobrinsky is the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, CA. Her poems and stories have appeared in or are forthcoming from 100 Word Story, *82 Review, Magma Poetry, Monkeybicycle, Eleven Eleven, Jewish Quarterly (UK), Shampoo Poetry, among many others.

See another poem in Issue 2.1