By Riley Kross

Featured art: Jezebel’s Daughters by Chloe McLaughlin

– for Amy

The baby
finally sleeps

so she
paints her

toenails bright
red with

practiced strokes
so later

she can
see her

bare feet
pacing the

dark kitchen
and remember

while breastfeeding
again again

feet propped
remember how

small all
art begins

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Riley Kross has published short fiction in The Normal School, Blackbird, Fiction Southeast, and Grist. These are his first published poems. He holds an MFA from North Carolina State University and lives with his wife and three children in Birmingham, Alabama.