Welcome to Labrys, your student-run art and literature collective of Smith College.

a right off jefferson boulevard, fifteen yards from the blue mailbox
grandma speaks to her crabapples

she wears linen the color of its blossoms, plum purple
with a hem of unraveling cotton, hanging off the graceless edges like worms clung to a tattered cliff
bare feet and bare flesh
sheer with violet rivers, stippled with primary colors
and toenails like chipped flecks of graphite on white paper
a santa ana wind scrapes the rusting lawn like an iron rake
leaves strewn like black pepper
and sweeps through her scalp like a brittle broom
its coarse bristles bite at the frazzled ends
her head, a spineless sea urchin in an air vacuum

in her shifting hands she caresses the miniature fruits on the branches, one by one
she counts the offspring like chicken eggs on a refrigerated shelf in a supermarket
her neck compresses like a standing slinky,
and she whispers,
a delightful forty-seven this autumn day, oh
quite a tree you are
and she approaches the slender trunk of the crabapple tree, as fragile as her silk wrists
her arms open in an embrace and her belly presses into its brown ridges
her withered lips close and her eyes smile