Four Poems by Andrea Potos

AT THE NAIL SALON

High, bright ceilings,
two wall-sized video screens
showing lapis blue and white domes
and the red cliffs of Santorini–
beside it, two small signs are posted:
Kindness, Gratitude, the same words
my mother used when once my daughter
asked: Yaya, what would you say
is your life’s philosophy?

I’m thinking of her
sitting beside me on the soft pale chair
as quiet Elisabet files and trims
and buffs my nails,
applies one clear coat and another
and then another, all the way
to my chosen pink called Beloved,
and carrying a sheen like an opal
within it, like pearlescent sky
on the verge of summer sunset
as I hear my mother saying:
Beautiful, honey.

*

JUNE IS A WORD AND A MEMORY

I often roam inside, the glorious blooms
of peonies alongside the sorrowing
month of my mother’s leaving
on the same day and hour her baby brother
had gone seventy-seven years before.

When I told this to my mother’s
kind doctor, he stopped still:
This is profoundly important, as if he
understood in that moment
how sometimes the secret
resonances of the world come to light

and the perfect correspondences of this
world and the other shine like the June
sun that unabashedly blazed beyond
the window of her hospital room.

*

WHEN THE WOMAN ASKED: ISN’T IT TIME TO STOP
WRITING POEMS ABOUT MY MOTHER

I looked away,
seeing into memories
of Monet’s water lilies,
canvas after canvas
of shifting
reflections in water,
each moment
altering the whole.
And I remembered
how changed
his haystacks appeared
in noon light,
or in the snow,
or laying under the setting sun.

*

MY MOTHER AND LIPSTICK

I never thought about lipstick
until after my mother died
when I gathered them from
her bedroom drawers, bathroom shelves,
one or two still on her coffee table
from the morning she left for the hospital–
all the exuberant shades of pink or red she loved.

She wouldn’t go anywhere without pausing
to put some on
as I do now, standing
at my mirror in her name,
following the contours of my lips like hers,
seeing her face, wearing again
softsilver rose, hot coral, all heart.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Two Emilys (Kelsay Books) and Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press). A new collection entitled The Presence of One Word is forthcoming later in 2025. Recent poems can be found in CALYX Journal, Presence, New York Times Book Review, Earth’s Daughters, and Poem. You can find her at andreapotos.com