Samantha DeFlitch

two poems

Second Sunday of Advent

This is God’s country,
she says, returning from her
winter’s walk, as though
everything wild is good.
I knead sweet dough, smile
at her musings on the hymn-
song of a rushed thrush.
Some snowshoe hare had
blessed her with its scram,
an eager bolt for shelter.
She flings snow from gloves.
We’re this close to heaven.

How close is this close?
I felt pain again today.
I hold my waning body in
muted movements like a
bumblebee tricked by the
hope of spring-come-too-soon.
A low-slung sun flashes through
wrong spines of rime ice as
I hunker down deeper into
the unsafety of my own self.
Ah, babushka, many things
are gone before their going.

The Dog Cannot Speak Polish

I am saying the same things
over and over.

Dog. God. Tiled kitchen floor,
lonely girl in bed.

Snake plant. Sourdough starter
I found by the roadside

in the Strip District. A 
babushka left it 

there because it would not
pick up any Polish,

even though she whispered
soft sounds in evening,

smuggled it into St. Stanislaus
Kostka and sat it beside

her in the pew. My small dog,
tongue lopping along her

mouth’s left side, thinks
sit means lie down

so I understand the inherent
impossibility of teaching

meaning through language.
I myself thought love

meant smallness, and so developed
an eating disorder. We all make

mistakes. A starter is abandoned
in Pittsburgh—it cannot

give paw. My dog skips breakfast— 
a quick learner, that one.

Samantha is the author of Confluence (Broadstone Books, 2021). A National Poetry Series finalist, her work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Colorado Review, The Missouri Review, Appalachian Review, and On the Seawall, among others. She lives in New Hampshire with her corgi dog, Moose.