previously published in Salamander 10, no 5 (2005)

April

We smoke the roach you sweet-talked

crabby Lauren into parting with,

you drop ash in my hair, on the wall Joe Strummer

smashes a guitar, slow-hand Chaucer nudges my lips—

. . . than longen folk to goon . . .

We’re not exactly tripping any more, but streetlights

still flash their porous rainbows, the soft windows tremble and sigh,

and when you shake Revolver onto the turntable,

“She Said She Said” fattens the night air like a tulip.

. . . the tendre croppes, the yonge sonne . . .

Already I’m afraid to leave you, already I’m lonely.

Eye-jangled and forlorn, I watch you rattle cellophane,

tear open a pack of Marlboros, cough and strike a match,

suck up the fumes of one more cigarette.

. . . Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth . . .

The tulip sways. She bows low, she offers me her red throat.

. . . so priketh him nature in hir corages . . .

What hurt, what hunger do I dread?

Dawn Potter is the author of two collections of poetry--most recently How the Crimes Happened, forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Sewanee Review, the Threepenny Review, Salamander, and many other journals, and she's been nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. A member of the Beloit Poetry Journal’s editorial board, Dawn will be the 2008 resident poet/teacher at the Frost Place's Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Otherwise, she mostly stays home. Periodically, however, she sweats through violin competitions, manages a goat dairy, teaches elementary school music, abets a pre-teen rock band, edits academic manuscripts, canvasses for Greenpeace, and raises chickens and pigs. She lives in Harmony, Maine, with photographer Thomas Birtwistle and their two sons.