Fine Yellow Dust

LAURA APOL is the author of several collections of poetry, including Falling into Grace; Crossing the Ladder of Sun; Requiem, Rwanda; and Nothing but the Blood, winner of the 2019 Oklahoma Book Award for poetry and the 2019 Independent Publisher Award silver medal for poetry. She currently serves as the poet laureate for the Lansing area in mid-Michigan.

This collection of poems hangs together brilliantly, each poem standing alone but building on the one that went before and the one that follows. Anyone who loves poetry will love this book. Anyone who has lost a child will seek it out. Any human who has felt grief or fears the grief to come will find this book a balm and a revelation.—Lorna Crozier, author of Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)

• Contents Preface The Little Mermaid When It All Seems Too Much Bipolar Onsra Homing Too Late On Returning from Holland, I Find a Lone Tulip in My Garden Revision The Funeral Director Asks Lullaby Instructions for the Friends Who Are Sorting My Daughter’s Things This Afternoon Hers Patient Stone The Fox First Mother’s Day after Her Death Persephone Of the Heart Birth Mark Betrayal Dream in Which My Daughter Forgives Protection Seaglass The Baby Eclipse End of the Motherline Flight Elephant Ears Shooting Sleeping Beauty River of Oblivion Prayer on Opening Day Felo De Se First Thanksgiving without Her Only Bone Grief Pearls First Christmas without Her Wound I Rent a Room in Victoria Gestation As If Metamorphosis Her Father Grooming The Breaking Last Entry The Cruelest Month Ash Wednesday Easter Morning One Turn from Silence Who Speaks with Angels Evensong Coming Home to the River And on A Pause in an All-Day Rain Author’s Note Acknowledgments