Andrea Potos' full-length collection of poems Yaya's Cloth was published by Iris Press, and her chapbook of poems The Perfect Day was published by Parallel Press. Her poems have been published widely and are forthcoming in Women's Review of Books, Nimrod, Spillway, Southern Poetry Review, CALYX Journal, Blue Unicorn, Poetry East and several other journals and anthologies.
Spring 2009
Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 1
Poetry Interview Translations Fiction Book Reviews
Andrea Potos
After The Evening Lecture On Insight Meditation
I walked under a sky glowing indigo,
past pine trees giving off the last
of their warm scent.
I came home to my husband,
twirled in my long skirt
beside the still-cluttered kitchen sink
while in the living room our daughter
was up way beyond bedtime.
I had no urge to scold anyone.
She scurried to her piano,
I heard her hands
release the Ode to Joy.
-- Previously published in Madison Magazine
I'm still here,
hovering in a white
dominion--not that of Emily's
wardrobe--
but blank pages,
and windows encrusted
with a cold too hard
to scrape clear.
Even Keats needed a thrush or two
to get the blood of ink to flow,
even he wanted some rose-tinged field of autumn
to set him to enduring flame.
In previous incarnations, it was
my mother's teenage bedroom,
my young aunt's refuge after divorce.
In my time, we gathered after supper for Gunsmoke,
I Love Lucy on the black and white console TV
that stood beside her ancient Singer
where my sister and I had carved
our names in the wood.
I¹d sit beside my grandmother, watching
her hands that refused to stay empty
since her 3-year-old son
died in that life before mine.
I took for granted her fingers' constant motion
of creation, the copper crochet hook dipping through
the yarn: another astonishing afghan born
on her blue knubby couch as she worked;
she sat at the end, leaning toward the strongest light.
© Andrea Potos
