Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Fountain
By Megan Baxter

Forth from the fountain, forth from the spring, ringed with cascades like locks, like the hair of a girl. And pouring, still life from the stone, as the winters crack and creak, as the granite folds inward as if, pain doubled the rock, as if the middle no longer mattered and fell away, out of this tomb, fresh water. Always, the fountain in a garden, flowing, in the garden of rose and iris, sweet apple and vine, white lily, red throated tulip, roots deep in your rivers, their lips open. Rainwater runs through the bodies of the buried, like blood, like sweet promises, rushing through the rib bones, filling the eye sockets, brimming. In the reflection of the fountain, the moon is torn to a thousand pieces. The mouth opens, thirsty.