Pro Forma

by Joan Colby

NANA SESTINA

Slag falls on the black cliff. A bracelet
of fire. Look child, says Nana,
drawing back Irish lace
curtains. The wheelchair,
contraption of cane and iron
carries her to this brink, withered and white

as old Kleenex. The room flares white
bathed in the mill's leavings. A linked bracelet
of flat cars rumbles on iron
tires over the spur. Nana
holds me on her lap. Wheels
clatter on and on unlacing

evening stars. I toy with lace
motifs of Nana's altarcloths, white
snowflakes, crystals, mandalas, wheels
of intricate thread. A bracelet
of magic spells hooked by Nana's
tiny flashing tool of iron.

Nana has a bun of iron
hair. In her lace
apron pocket are peppermints. A banana
for after supper and three white
cubes of sugar. My mouth's a bracelet
for sweetness. Then I am wheeling

into slumber. Nana wheels
me to the cheap iron
bedstead. My dreams become a bracelet
of stars. My shoes unlaced
I am mailed between white
sheets until Manana.

In the impoverished dark, Nana
sits between parentheses of wheels.
This is a neighborhood where anything white
soon labors into hues of iron
or fringes with black lace
as slag congeals, an onyx bracelet.

I murmur. Nana tends the iron
smelter of my sleep. She wields Gaelic lullabyes lacing
the night with the white knots of love's bracelet.

36 pages, Chapbook

First published March 20, 2015