Clavicle

By. Tara Elliot

There between your stubbled chin
& the shoulder pocked by adolescence

is my place, my hollow;
where muscle & sinew meet

the hardness of bone, where
the harshness of your mountainous

resolve fades into a valley
of flesh—where God has chiseled

for my lips a path into the man I call
husband, the husband I call home.

Tara A. Elliott’s poems have appeared in TAOS Journal of International Poetry & Art, The American Journal of Poetry, Wildness, and Stirring among others. She is the founder and director of Salisbury, Maryland’s Poetry Week and co-chair of the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. She was recently awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA).
For more information, visit www.taraaelliott.com