Visiting the Dead

by Dianna MacKinnon Henning

Down the front of Father’s graveside granite

mined from Vermont’s Danby quarries,

I run my faltering hand. All the while

the grainy years lash out their wrongs.

Had he waited two decades to feel

a daughter’s hand across his stone?

I scream, Look at me, Half woman, the one

you put a damper on, Get a practical trade—none

of this artsy fartsy stuff. Clearly, he’d never been

touched where it matters most: where a daughter

knows her father hears she’d once dreamt

of becoming someone different.

* * * * *

Dianna MacKinnon Henning has work published in The Moth, Ireland; Sukoon, Volume 5; Mojave River Review; The New Verse News; Hawaii Pacific Review; Sequestrum; South Dakota Review; Naugatuck River Review; Lullwater Review; The Kentucky Review; Blue Fifth Review; The Main Street Rag; Clackamas Literary Review; 22 wagons by Danijela Trajković, Istok Akademia, an anthology of contemporary Anglophone poetry; California Quarterly; Poetry International and Fugue. Three-time Pushcart nominee. New work due out 2019 in New American Writing, The Kerf. Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several CAC grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program. Henning’s third poetry book Cathedral of the Hand was published 2016 by Finishing Line Press.