Fall 2009

Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 3

 

Poetry    Reviews    Fiction   

Andrea Potos

 

Dry Spell Coming

Don't tell me the branches
have stopped announcing green---

that the spigot now drips
brown rust to the tile.

Don't tell me that lush moon
in my window has already
turned its face,

that what the guidebook said
about the home of the great dead
poet is true: even
the nightingales are gone---

don't tell me that.

 

Listening To A Recording Of Contemporary Poets I Wonder

what Emily Dickinson would sound like---

a field mouse
murmuring behind a pantry wall,

or the skin of a cosmos seed
cracking open under soil?

Perhaps something more wintry---

crystals blooming on a pane, just as the moon
breaks through behind them,

as the dusty tail of a comet
melts into the indelible dark.

 

First Fall Semester

I bounded off the Badger Bus, grinning
at my best friend Cassie ready
to show me the way to the Bakers Rooms.
A line wound out the door; we didn't mind
waiting; classes would not start for a week.
We took a spiral staircase down
into the bowels of the vintage brick
building. Chandeliers hung low.
Vivialdi's strings filled the air,
and coffee smells like brown rich peat.
Linen flowed over small round tables
set with silver, crystal pots heaped
wth glistening jam we lathered over
our warm croissants. Even the steam
tasted of butter. And the jam, oh
the jam that crunched gently in our mouths
was studded with seeds like those
Persephone tasted after she left
her world, when she knew
she would never return home to stay.

 

Sun Lover

Face upturned, arms and legs
splayed out in tall grass,
I could be a plant taking light,
making it food,

warmth seeping through skin,
flesh on the verge
of some joyful, chemical
transformation.

I think of the faithful
who open their mouths for the wafer
dissolving, converting
to something like god in their bodies.

 

© Andrea Potos

 

            

Poetry    Reviews    Fiction