With Which A Fox Blooms In The Winterport Graveyard by Denise Bickford Hopkins

The summer is fleeting & I am young & I refuse to find myself within the haunted house
called my home --  my father stripping the walls to their flesh then abandoning them, 
the skeleton of the ancient tin ceiling exposed and never fixed, pre-plumbing as the shitty, old
plastic septic pipe extends itself into our dining room cut out through the white lead paint on 
tiles -- then -- the chaos, the heat, the insulation spilling into the fruit bowl, the cat litter in the 
cracks of the wood flooring. My mother begging me to pick the lice from my sisters’ heads. 
The real ghosts gone, no more a sighting than what has been done to their resting place. 

No, it’s wildflowers out here. It’s bleeding purple blackberries. It’s sneaking deer. 
It’s two red fox kits (my first ever sighting!) blooming under a lichen-weary headstone, 
tail curled & touching its little brother. 
Both asleep in the cooling days, both translating the word home.

Denise Bickford Hopkins (they/theirs) is a queer poet originally from mid-coast Maine. They received their BA in English + Anthropology from the University of Maine in 2012 and their MFA in creative writing from Boise State University in 2016. Denise’s poems have been featured in Seneca Review, Foglifter, Baest, and Stolen Island among others. Repka, their chapbook, is available through Dancing Girl Press. Denise currently lives in Pullman, Washington with their husband, Miles.

19 May 2025