because their mother’s told them: always
use two hands—or was it always
wash both hands?
Fireflies are always trying
to get away with something,
just because they are beautiful,
just because they beat Edison
by a million years.
But my mother pulls off their bulbs
to make them into rings.
She won’t stop making rings
until she has one for each finger
of both of her two hands.
About the Author
Emily Wharton earned her MFA from Hamline University. She has had poems published in the Minnesota Poetry Calendar and the Backwards City Review and forthcoming in the Shame / less anthology. She is the author of Zoomorphic: A Chapbook More information about her poetry and other projects can be found at the link below. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with her wife and their tiny Sheltie named Haiku.
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