"The Dog Is Lost + My Brother Is Not Here" by Amy Schmitz

Ekphrasis poetry in response to the artist Marisol

‘The Dog Is Lost + My Brother Is Not Here’
                                                                        after Marisol


In the basement under the stairs where the tools 
are kept 	the affection I feel for them now is 
foreign		I am fixated by the way a screw is 
fastened to the duct work 	the way duct work fits 
inside dry wall 	the way dry wall is set up 
so it supports a roof or a subfloor which I could easily 
slip through if this were another kind of story 	and 
if it were that kind of story I would drop into a 
winter scene from our childhood wonderland	
even a common junco could be so charmed 
by snow falling on snow falling on snow-laden limbs 
that it’d think this was a life worth living	But we 
know better	the blower needs gas and the bucket of 
ice melt is empty	something might be dying 
underneath the wisteria and skeletal trees like pole grabbers 
pull at us as if we were litter on a walkway 	the weight of it all is
crushing 	just this morning I had to use the burl 
of my thigh to lift a shovel-full	This is the last time I 
look for you   

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My first collection of poetry, Border Crossing, was published in April 2018. My work has been published in Quiddity, High Plains Literary Review, Sugar House Review, Kestrel, San Pedro River Review, Borderlands: Texas Literary Review, Louisiana Review, Askew, Poetry International, Freshwater and elsewhere. I have won awards from Poetry International, the Women’s National Book Association and the CNY chapter of the National League of American Pen Women. I hold an MFA from George Mason University.