her heart is her sleeve
diaphanous sinew
home and breathing
her heart
cloaks her
purple and embroidered
with veins
stitchery of bloodline
her body a sampler
of how
we might love
ancestors breathing
their silver-eyed needles leaping
the skin’s linen
pressed by a line
of lined hands
Lisa Roullard’s poetry has recently appeared in Rock & Sling, Hawaii Pacific Review, and StringTown. It has also appeared on buses in Boise, Idaho, as part of Poetry in Motion. As often as possible she walks in the rain.