Tu Fu’s friend made paper charms to call back the ones
whose souls were lost to war. Our ceiling fan scrawls circle on
top of circle on top of—what else is there to do under a spinning minute but crimp origami birds with my daughter, slide paper on
through the time we don’t own,
crease paper to call the ones
whose souls zag away? If every in-
hale is for spring, every exhale is for them, fold for fold—
Daneen Wardrop is the author of three poetry collections: The Odds of Being, Cyclorama, and Life as It, which received the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award. A fourth collection, Silk Road, will appear later this year. She has also published three books of literary criticism, including Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing (New Hampshire, 2009). She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly, FIELD, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review and elsewhere. (updated 4/2018)