Tag: Andrea Potos

Five Poems by Andrea Potos

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THE FRIENDSHIP

The week
when she wrote:

You and I will
explore Truth together,

my heart
signed on instantly:

Yes,
though nothing followed–

they were words
only, after all;

I who am one who believes
in words, words

have rescued my life, after all.
Some say words are cheap;

I say, they
are costlier than you know.

*

SADNESS IS ON ITS WAY

I can hear the foghorns,
skies a drizzled mist,
clouds sodden
with grey weight
as if with so much
to let go of,
so much to say.

*

THE MOMENT I SENSED MY MOTHER WAS LEAVING

Standing in the mist-
drizzled green of Connemara,
the Wild Atlantic Way thousands of miles
from my mother in the rehab home,
I called to make sure she knew
I’d be back in four days.
I needed to ask her
how she was that morning– her voice
weakened and crackling across the vastness–
Just fair, she said,
Unable, for the first time in my life,
to offer the reassurance
for the daughter she loved so well-
it was then I knew.

*

WHEN MY WIDOWER NEIGHBOR INVITES ME
TO COME AND TAKE WHATEVER I WANT
FROM HIS WIFE’S WARDROBE

Three dressing rooms of voluminous wonder,
ballroom gowns, brocaded jackets
and scarves, leather purses and shoes,
and dressers filled with nightwear and tops.
I browsed and lingered, stayed for nearly an hour.
When I opened the deepest mahogany drawer, I found
a pale pink sweater, cloud-soft,
patterned all over with lipstick prints.
I thought of my mother, all the years
of her beloved Revlon shades.
I might have felt her then
tap my shoulder: Here is some love
from me honey–take it–
and I did.

*

WHEN OUR FAVORITE RESTAURANT CLOSES
         for Mom

Though you’ve been gone
nearly ten years now,
I’d drive the eighty miles
to go there–the glass doors still
opening for both of us.
I’d order our coffee
in their thick ceramic mugs,
then slices of their legendary
blueberry pie for take-home–
heaping with plump berries,
no crust on top, cold, with clouds
of whipped cream for later.
Each bite would remind me.
Now I must find
another place for us–
I want a location to point to,
to say, here, Mom, let’s go together,
I’ll pick you up at noon.

*

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

AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS, RUNNING INTO AN ESTRANGED FRIEND by Andrea Potos

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AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS,
RUNNING INTO AN ESTRANGED FRIEND

It might have been a play,
an audience of souls:

me, waiting beside the wide picture window
of the inn, where the Candlelight Dinner Hour

would soon begin.
You emerged from the fireplace room

where no fire burned,
to step in the space where I stood.

Your gaze turned inward, you glided past me,
off the stage, again you stepped out of my life.

*

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

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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WAITING FOR THE MAIL

This is the week
this might be the day

like I said
yesterday also–

maybe tomorrow
or the day after–

balancing on
anticipation’s tightrope–

I love the air up here–
freed of everything–

disappointment,
even joy.

*

ANXIETY MORNING

You’re open-ended,
some necklace
that has lost its clasp.

You might be ploughing
across bogland, ground
precarious beneath you.

You’d be a great cypress
overlooking the Pacific cliffs if you could–
wind-sculpted by centuries, still held.

*

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

Four Poems by Andrea Potos

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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

ONE ART’s September 2025 Reading

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ONE ART’s September 2025 Reading

We’re pleased to announce ONE ART’s September 2025 Reading!

Date: Sunday, September 7

Time: 2:00pm Eastern

Featured Poets: James Crews, Gloria Heffernan, William Palmer, Michael T. Young, Andrea Potos

>>> Tickets Available <<<

Free!

(Donations appreciated.)

The official event is expected to run approximately 1-hour.

After the reading, please consider sticking around for approximately 30-minutes of Community Time discussion with our Featured Poets.

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~ About Our Featured Poets ~

James Crews is the author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage & Self-Compassion, and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including Love Is for All of Us, a collection of LGBTQ+ love poems. He is also the author of four poetry collections and lives in Southern Vermont with his husband. For more info: www.jamescrews.net

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Gloria Heffernan’s forthcoming book Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in Spring, 2025. Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books).  Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.

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William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in Ecotone, I-70 Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Rust & Moth, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. A retired professor of English at Alma College, he lives in Traverse City, Michigan.  

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Michael T. Young’s fourth collection, Mountain Climbing a River, will be published by Broadstone Media in late 2025. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including I-70, Mid-Atlantic Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Vox Populi.

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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

*

On Forgiveness by Andrea Potos

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ON FORGIVENESS

I’ve long been told
its chief benefit is a gift
to oneself most of all.

Suspicious of ease,
stingy as I am to give it,
forgive me when I say:

the clutching of my tight heart
has been talisman
warding off the hurt to come.

*

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

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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WHEN THE WOMAN TOLD ME SHE SELDOM USES A PEN OR A PENCIL

Her dailiness now being key-stroke
and finger-strike,

no ink drying, no textures of
a rough or creamy page–

I tried to imagine having forgotten or
never having learned how each word

takes its time to be born, the rise
and curve and dip of a letter,

the scritch-scritch on paper
like a patter of raindrops on the roof

of a garret where a woman once leaned
over a desk, writing her story by hand.

*

AFTER THE DREAM, MY FRIEND
       In memory, Rosemary

I woke up with her on my mind,
though not on my mind really–
an essence
hovering around me
like coastal weather–
her presence, the giant redwood
so often sheathed in mist
who still stands there–
a great reassurance on the path.

*

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

GETTING THE EKG by Andrea Potos

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GETTING THE EKG

Electrodes seem suctioned
to my skin while my stockinged feet
peek out from the thin blanket.
I chat with nurses Darva and Mackenzie,
notice a tone in my voice
I didn’t know was mine. I can hear
my mother speaking, her small giggling,
gentle conversation while sitting
each week in Infusion Bay, and later,
waiting for another test to see
if the cancer had spread.

I don’t have cancer, but my chest
has been hurting, a steady ache which,
it turns out today, is nothing drastic.
Muscle strain or stress they say, or maybe
the patient diligence of loss, all that is
past and impending, the sustaining
rhythm that holds it.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

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ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2024

  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  2. Betsy Mars
  3. Donna Hilbert
  4. Abby E. Murray
  5. Robbi Nester
  6. Julie Weiss
  7. john compton
  8. Tina Barry
  9. Timothy Green
  10. Kim Addonizio
  11. Andrea Potos
  12. Kari Gunter-Seymour
  13. Callie Little
  14. Alison Luterman
  15. Robin Wright
  16. Sally Nacker
  17. Trish Hopkinson
  18. Christina Kallery
  19. Vicki Boyd
  20. Terri Kirby Erickson
  21. Susan Vespoli
  22. Bonnie Proudfoot
  23. Scott Ferry & Leilani Ferry
  24. Martha Silano
  25. Joan Mazza

Note: Some poets were published multiple times in ONE ART in 2024. Links are to each poet’s most-read poem(s) of the year.

Grief Drops In by Andrea Potos

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Grief Drops In
         in memory of my friend

Dinner with your husband–
easy conversation and tall tales,
old-time jazz on the jukebox.
In the center of the table,
a basket of fries to share–
his hand reaching for one,
his ring finger bare.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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MY MOTHER’S NAME

Two days before the last, after
the seizure had rearranged
my mother’s bearings,
I sat beside her while
the young dark-haired nurse
fluffed her pillow, measured her pulse,
offered to apply
my mother’s signature lipstick,
the Revlon Hot Coral we both loved.
I listened as the nurse asked my mother
to say her name out loud,
and in a gravelly almost-whisper my mother
chose Penny Kosmos—her maiden name
spoken so readily as if she were already
winding back to her beginnings
without us, before me
or my sister, before my father,
back to her girlhood
even to the origin of space
and time, of a world
that so loved her in it.

*

FOR MY COLLEGE BOYFRIEND KILLED IN A PRIVATE PLANE CRASH AT AGE TWENTY-NINE

I see you tall and handsome still,
chestnut hair cut extra short
for your Navy duties those last years.
From the photo you sent me, I noted
a hairline receding just a little;
I like to think you’d eventually be balding
as your tall, professorial father was bald.
I like to think of you again, as my own still-long hair
thins and loses some dark sheen; I like to think of you
as one of us now—some added weight around the middle
perhaps, lines around the eyes and the mouth that maps
a generous life—an older man who once loved so well
an insecure girl-woman of nineteen whose long dark hair
whirled delightfully in the air while you drove her around the city
in your dashing red convertible.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

THE CONDITIONS by Andrea Potos

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THE CONDITIONS

Feeling ornery enough, I try to remember
what the popular Buddhist monk claimed:
Conditions for Happiness he called them, or was it
Conditions of Happiness?
Everywhere all the time, he said, entrances
are within us—a breath, a pause, to begin to notice

the air, even a sideways rain, that sustains us;
the ground, even the choppy asphalt, that holds us—
the cardinals in the springtime with their near
continuous song waking us by 5 a.m., just because
they know no other way to be—
alive and ready to sing.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of March 2024

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of March 2024 ~

  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  2. Donna Hilbert
  3. Terri Kirby Erickson
  4. Betsy Mars
  5. Nancy Huggett
  6. Meredith Stewart Kirkwood
  7. Timothy Green
  8. Wendy Kagan
  9. Andrea Potos
  10. Robert Nordstrom

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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EMERGENCY FAMILY MEETING
                  In memory

I was called to attend, my father
still breathing under the mask after
three weeks, his flesh seized
by a whole body infection.

What I remember now is the perfect
smoothness of my tires on the interstate,
their even sounds of rubber on asphalt
along the ninety-plus miles,

an in-between I could carry
before I’d trace again my steps
along the polished, sterile hallways–
nothing yet decided, no proclamation
issued yet by the doctor, my father still
lying in his present tense

while I sped into the future.

*

ON NO LONGER MOURNING MY 19-YEAR-OLD SELF

Girl-woman with the prairie-flat tummy
and creaseless skin, not one dream of one grey
strand on her flowing river of dark hair;
wearing tube-top and short shorts, or denim jacket
and swirling skirt, the girl whirled around the city streets
by her dashing boy-man in his British convertible.
She could so easily stay out until dawn.

Let her be where she dwells, in her glistening,
unreachable realm, without the astonishing
daughter she would later bear,

her hands that had not yet found their path
to the making of poems, her heart
still so unrescued and unformed.

*

Andrea Potos’ recent collections of poetry are Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), and Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books). A new book from Fernwood Press entitled Belonging Songs is forthcoming in 2025. Her poems are forthcoming in Poetry East, The Windhover, Amethyst Review, Paterson Literary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Rosebud and The Healing Muse. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by books.

A BELATED THANK YOU TO MISS JOANNE MARTINS OF CATHEDRAL SQUARE PUBLISHING COMPANY IN MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN, CIRCA 1971. by Andrea Potos

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A BELATED THANK YOU TO MISS JOANNE MARTINS OF CATHEDRAL SQUARE PUBLISHING COMPANY IN MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN, CIRCA 1971.

You must have guessed how, at 11-years-old, I craved
to be Jo March, scribbling in my garret,
mice scuffling under the floorboards, a heap of apple cores
beside me while rain battered the windowpanes.
By hand I wrote my 103 page novel modeled
not secretly enough after Little Women,
and I mailed it off to you.
Bless you Miss Martin for writing me back
three weeks later, for your neatly typed
bullet points of advice: Keep this manuscript
in a safe place, every month re-read, you’ll be surprised
at the improvements you can make.
Read as much as you can, get a library card.
When you describe an object or person, pretend
you are talking to someone who is blind.
Save your money and invest in a typewriter–a must!
Or ask your parents for one for Christmas.
When you tell your story, write as if
you are talking to a friend, the way you would talk
about something that happened at school.
A writer must always remember
his best friend is the reader. Please do not be
discouraged at receiving your first rejection.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several full-length collections of poems, most recently Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). Her poems appear widely online and in print, most recently in Potomac Review, Braided Way, Poem, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

Three Poems by Andrea Potos

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AT THE GREEN CEMETARY AND NATURAL PATH SANCTUARY
           For Rosemary

I’m lost on the narrow trails sloping
and curving among the exuberant green of late May.

I suppose my friend is everywhere here,
and that is the point: growing into the earth

now, indistinguishable from fern or maple,
oak or ash. Birdsong crisscrosses

everywhere as I make my way deeper
into the woods. It is supposed to be enough;

I might be too set or greedy, I want more–
one marker with dates chiseled

or raised in burnished bronze.
I want a stone that endures for her name.

*

A LIST,
           for Rosemary, in memory

Today I tried making a list
of all the places you and I gathered
together: Lombardinos for Italian,
LaBrioche for bi-weekly poetry tea,
the Bubble Up Bar for nightcaps,
the bookshops where you’d sit front row
whenever I gave a reading.

And I will never not see you,
settling onto your living room sidechair
while waiting for your signature Bolognese sauce
to find its final perfection for our dinners.
           There you are again–drawing your fingers upwards
through your light hair as you make another
passionate point; your smile widening, ablaze–
you are looking at me as you speak, how easy it was
to love myself in that glow.

*

ANOTHER JUNE MORNING HAS ARRIVED

Anniversary of my mother’s leaving,
exuberance of early summer

and triumph of the peonies, their pink
and white faces spread like joy.

Every year it is the same, I count the days
until her last has arrived.

Every year an early hour
calls the birds to singing.

Every June I remember
how waking belongs to song.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several full-length collections of poems, most recently Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). Her poems appear widely online and in print, most recently in Potomac Review, Braided Way, Poem, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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AFTER LEARNING MY FRIEND HAS DIED

And so it begins,
the tallying backwards
to remember: when was the last
telephone call, the last
text message, last email,
the last time seeing her face, her skin still
lovely smooth in her 69th year–
hearing her buoyant laughter that late
afternoon on her patio, September sun
lighting up the back of her head in the photo
she later joked finally made her
into some form of angelic being.

*

TO THIS DAY
            for Rosemary

The calendar marks three weeks
to this day your heart
slowed to a crawl,
then stopped.
Three weeks that might be
three hundred years
or none at all–
there are no inbetweens,
no middle grounds
in this land of your leaving.

*

Andrea Potos is author of several poetry collections, including her newest book Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press). Others include: Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), Mothershell (Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry), An Ink Like Early Twilight (Salmon Poetry), We Lit the Lamps Ourselves (Salmon Poetry) and Yaya’s Cloth (Iris Press). Her poems can be found widely in print and online, most recently in The Sun, Poetry East, Potomac Review, Braided Way, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (Storey Publishing), and The Path to Kindness (Storey Publishing). Andrea lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she was a longtime bookseller in independent bookstores.

First Love Debunked by Andrea Potos

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First Love Debunked
               for Win

It’s the second love
I remember, the boy
who baked a banana cream pie
from scratch
for our first dinner,

played a Brandenburg concerto
and told me that,
with orange juice, it was the best
hangover medicine,

the boy who whirled me around Milwaukee
in his red convertible MGB, and,
like a cliche come true, ran out of gas
on our first date.

The boy who, whenever
he came to pick me up,
paused before his rearview mirror
to straighten his wind-messed chestnut hair,
a gesture a girl might do, I’d watch him
through the sunroom window, he wanted
to be beautiful for me,
he landed on my doorstep like a prince, written
in a better story.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including Marrow of Summer and Mothershell, both from Kelsay Books; and A Stone to Carry Home from Salmon Poetry. A new collection entitled Her Joy Becomes is forthcoming from Fernwood Press this November. Recent poems appear in The Sun, Poetry East, and Lyric. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Waiting Beside My Father by Andrea Potos

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WAITING BESIDE MY FATHER

In the ICU room, ten days
where he coma-slept, arranged by the doctor
to rest his brain after the fall,
I sat beside him. I remember wearing
my slate-blue jacket with the big ruffle
at the collar, its cotton soft and somehow
reassuring on my body as I watched
the nurses glide by in the gleaming hallways,
and the kind hospitalist arrived with a lift
of hope in his voice. Inside me, I felt a small, carved
chapel of patience I didn’t know I possessed.
I closed my eyes, apologized to my father
for years of crabbiness between us.
I felt his brain smoothing out its frenzy, as if floating
on a long journey, as if a river
was carrying us, though
I had never learned to swim.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including Marrow of Summer and Mothershell, both from Kelsay Books; and A Stone to Carry Home from Salmon Poetry. A new collection entitled Her Joy Becomes is forthcoming from Fernwood Press this November. Recent poems appear in The Sun, Poetry East, and Lyric. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

My Father and Pavarotti by Andrea Potos

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My Father and Pavarotti

On my stereo this morning,
just as I lean in to write, Pavarotti
came on, his aria filling the whole room.
I’m not schooled enough to know
which aria, only how my father loved him
and how, leaving his crabbiness aside, my father
would sit watching the Lake Michigan surf
from his living room window while the great man sang
over the speakers that filled the house;
and on the patio of his Southern winter home,
he listened, while the lapis surface of the pool sparkled;
then in the last years of the rehab home where he lived
with his rescued brain, a small carved canyon still visible
where the surgeon had rushed in. Once a week I drove
the eighty miles to sit with him there, his silver hair
still blazing, his eyes closed as we absorbed the pure notes
of the rich tenor who sang to my father still.

*

This poem is forthcoming in Andrea’s collection Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press, fall, 2022).

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books) and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). A new collection entitled Her Joy Becomes is due out from Fernwood Press in the fall of 2022. She has poems forthcoming in The Sun Magazine, Poetry East, Spiritus Journal, and The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy (Storey Publishing, April 2022).

TOO MANY PHOTOGRAPHS OF MY FATHER by Andrea Potos

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TOO MANY PHOTOGRAPHS OF MY FATHER

In frames, on poster boards, on tabletops
in the downstairs parlor of the funeral home
that humid evening in mid-August, low lighting
from wall sconces and brass lamps, loveseats
and chairs arranged to look like invitations,
so many people examining and exclaiming over all
that proof of my father’s long and irrepressible life;
I could only glance from a distance, I wanted only
to stand halfway between the overwrought mahogany
coffin my stepmother picked out, and the back of the room
where water was being served, surely it should have
been wine, my father merited the good wine I said to myself
standing there among the murmuring and respectful living,
holding on to my center the way I knew how
somewhere in the middle of the room.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Marrow of Summer and Mothershell, both from Kelsay Books; and A Stone to Carry Home from Salmon Poetry. You can find her poems many places online and in print, most recently in Spirituality & Health Magazine, Braided Way, Buddhist Poetry Review, and Poetry East. She is actively working on a new collection of poems entitled Her Joy Becomes.

One Poem by Andrea Potos

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ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY OF MY MOTHER’S PASSING

Her joy becomes my joy. —
         Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

This June morning, flickering light and shadow
on the spread pages of my book
while somewhere above me in the arching
and waving branches of the beeches, one cardinal
keeps throbbing an unceasing song.
And the sky–did I mention the cloudless sky?
The softest blue, as if created
with the pastels of a master, then brushed across
with the gentlest sweep of her arm.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Marrow of Summer and Mothershell, both from Kelsay Books; and A Stone to Carry Home from Salmon Poetry. You can find her poems many places online and in print, most recently in Spirituality & Health Magazine, Braided Way, Buddhist Poetry Review, and Poetry East. She is actively working on a new collection of poems, generated from the epigraph on this poem, called “Her Joy Becomes.”

Visiting the Hospice by Andrea Potos

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Visiting the Hospice

Call it heaven already–
air of ochre light, art on the walls–
a mosaiced Balinese dancer, a cathedral of orchids.
I glimpse siderooms filled with books,
leather sofas to sink inside, windows
with green views of paths winding
somewhere I cannot see.
Along the spacious hallways,
no one hurries.
Each person who greets me
carries a stillness I long to keep.
My friend sleeps most of the day now;
at the door of his room, I pause,
knowing the safety of his passage.

*

Andrea Potos is author of several poetry collections, most recently Mothershell (Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and Arrows of Light (Iris Press). Another collection is forthcoming in summer of 2021 entitled Marrow of Summer. She received the William Stafford Prize in Poetry, and several Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her poems can be found widely in print and online. “Visiting the Hospice” is included in Potos’ collection Marrow of Summer forthcoming in June 2021 from Kelsay Books.

Three Poems by Andrea Potos

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TRYING TO TEACH MY MOTHER TO CROCHET

I wanted something for her hands–
the dusky blue crochet hook I bought for her
and blue acrylic yarn the color
of the Greek sea near the long ago
city of her birth.

She didn’t ask for this lesson.
In her steady kindness, she went along
with me, trying to match her fingers
to the flow of looping yarn.
I worried she wouldn’t continue
when her mind told her
she needed another cigarette,

though the cancer had already set in both lungs
and her treatment begun. I never considered
how she might want to live her last months or years
doing what gave her balm, the familiar comfort
to inhale, taste and release a swirling elegance
of smoke. All I knew was my own need
to halt what had already begun, to keep her
present and seamlessly shawled around us.

*

WIG SHOPPING WITH MOM

Though after five months of chemo, her hair
was only thinned a little,
she had a free wig coming,
the nurse said. We visited the room
of floor-to-ceiling shelves: mannequin
heads, and baskets of scarves and wraps.
Mom settled in; we giggled, comparing
thoughts as she smiled for my cellphone camera:
dark auburn with short curls, layered
brunette waves, medium shaggy, sideways parts;
one wig with streaks of silver like surprise hints of lightning.
In no rush to agree on the one and decide,
we wanted to stay in that brief clearing
of complimentary joy. We never even considered
choosing anything other than hope.

*

CREATING

I think of my Yaya, all those hours
at her Singer sewing machine,
or sitting with her skeins of yarn,
or the thimble on her finger as she
basted and lined
the pleats of the drapes,
the hems of the dresses and skirts and coats,
as she embroidered the doilies and linens,
the pillowcases and sheets.

All I have are my pens, scatterings
of dark blue or black, sometimes purple
or green, depending on the mood,
hoping my hand aligns somehow with hers as
I make small stitches of words across paper
that, sometimes, feels like rough cotton,
sometimes like silk.

*

“Wig Shopping with Mom” and “Creating” are included in Potos’ collection Marrow of Summer forthcoming in Summer 2021.

*

Andrea Potos is author of several poetry collections, most recently Mothershell (Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and Arrows of Light (Iris Press). Another collection is forthcoming in summer of 2021 entitled Marrow of Summer. She received the William Stafford Prize in Poetry, and several Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her poems can be found widely in print and online. Both “Wig Shopping with Mom” and “Creating” are included in Potos’ collection Marrow of Summer forthcoming in Summer 2021.

Sleep Skills by Andrea Potos

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Sleep Skills

These days I wake up tired
after hours skimming sleep’s
surface like a hungry bird, waiting.
They say it’s a fact of growing older,
to lose the skill for sleep infants
and teenagers mindlessly have.

I think of my Yaya, when I was a girl,
she was already dressed before first light;
her body telling her it was time
to live the day, tend to her needles and thread,
her yarn; and in her kitchen, the flour and water
in their porcelain bowls; a woman waiting for the morning
to rise under her hands.

*

Andrea Potos is author of several poetry collections, most recently Mothershell (Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and Arrows of Light (Iris Press). Another collection is forthcoming in summer of 2021 entitled Marrow of Summer. She received the William Stafford Prize in Poetry, and several Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her poems can be found widely in print and online.