Poetry by Sarah Carey
AN ORPHAN ABSORBING HER LATE MOTHER’S GAZE WONDERS IF ANY VISION IS ETERNAL
Your dead mother is everywhere:
On the mantle, in the acacia photo cube,
reimagined from all sides. In the framed
Samuel Jackson quote on friendship,
which you hold up now and then
to remember who was there for you in the dark.
In threes, the way things happen in good
or bad luck, in her number of daughters,
she comes to you over the fireplace,
through the painted eyes of angel
figurines, bugling good cheer
at Christmas. What’s seen is blurred, perhaps
triplopia, her stigmatism, or the distance
four years from a death creates,
but you brighten and dim beneath her gaze,
like holiday lights, like variations on a theme,
held close within your inner ear,
a score you thought forgotten.
Out she comes, just like those china cherubs
excavated from generations of tissue—
original issue, papery and frail,
and in your best recall
stands up for you, unyielding
when you fail to believe.
And like the lifelong friend she was,
she swears that unlike all
the loves you lost, she’ll never leave
you wondering if her song was over
or who sang it best
among the quodlibets you were left with.
Sarah Carey explores place, loss, relationships, and ancestry through Southern landscapes and scientific observation. Her debut full-length collection of poems, The Grief Committee Minutes (Saint Julian Press, 2024), was an Eric Hoffer Award finalist. Her second collection, Bloodstream, was released from Mercer University Press in February 2026. Winner of the 2026 Sweet Lit Poetry Contest, she has been a finalist for the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize and the River Heron Review Prize. She also is the author of two chapbooks, including Accommodations (
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #54.
Submit to Cleaver!
