Tag: friend

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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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

Two Poems by Penelope Moffet

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Waking

          For Lynn Way

He didn’t like to wake up in the dark.
He needed light to seep in through the blinds.
Waking in the night was waking in prison,
mind and body pinioned to the bed.

He needed light to seep in through the blinds
or he woke into a nightmare from the past,
mind and body pinioned to the bed
beneath the car that crashed down a ravine.

He woke out of a nightmare of the past
into knowledge of the present, given light,
beneath the car that crashed down a ravine,
his arms still strong enough to lift himself.

In knowledge of the present, given light,
he could laugh, roll smokes, make love,
his arms still strong enough to lift himself,
swing his trunk and legs to the wheelchair.

He could laugh, roll smokes, make love
with his wild tongue, though nothing moved below,
swing his trunk and legs to the wheelchair,
roll forward into other rooms.

With his wild tongue, though nothing moved below,
he woke me from a too-long childhood,
rolled me into other rooms,
to pleasure so intense I levitated.

He woke me from a too-long childhood,
spoke to me of how he saw the world,
took me to pleasure so intense I levitated
then came to earth, and him, again.

He spoke to me of how he saw the world,
quoted the ancient Chinese poets,
then came to earth, and me, again.
He believed in nothing but erotic love.

He loved the ancient Chinese poets
and the spinning wood lathe in his shop.
He believed in nothing but erotic love,
relied on whisky and his work to get him through.

He loved the spinning wood lathe in the shop.
It was many years ago. I was so young.
He relied on whisky and work to get him through.
I’ve loved other men but now I sleep alone.

It was many years ago. I was so young.
Now waking in the night is waking in limbo.
I’ve loved other men but now I sleep alone.
I do not like to wake up in the dark.

*

A Friend for the Winter

The lizard moved indoors when the outside air
turned cold. He flickered here and there, found
hiding places in stacked wood, under the bed,
behind boxes. When sun came through French doors
he basked on the adobe floor, on gray days
calibrated his distance from the Franklin stove:
not too hot not too cold. Spiders, earwigs,
the last flies of autumn were his food.
Once those ran out he contemplated then ignored
carrot peel and broccoli florets that tumbled off
the cutting board. A friend to wild birds,
rosy boas, rattlers, the human didn’t mind
his presence, watched where she put her feet,
talked to him. They were a sort of family,
a mesh of solitudes. The weather warmed.
She left a door propped open.
Out he went for pushups on the stoop.
Quick as a flash a roadrunner was there
to grab him and run off.

*

Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Calyx and other literary journals. A full-length collection of her poetry will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives in Southern California.

One Poem by Patricia Davis-Muffett

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What to do with your grief
       for Dionne, June 2020

Butter. Sugar. Flour. Salt.
I am doing what I know.

Nineteen, I call my mother crying:
“I can’t make the pie crust work,”
“Come home,” she says. “We’ll fix it.”
The ice in the water,
the fork used to mix,
the way she floured the board.
It’s chemistry, yes–
but also this:
the things you pass
from hand to hand.

9/11. Child dropped at preschool.
Traffic grinds near the White House.
A plane overhead. The Pentagon burns.
The long trek home to reclaim our child.
We are told to stay in. I venture out.
Blueberries to make a pie.

My mother, so sick. Not hungry.
For a time, she is tempted by pies.
I bring them long after taste flees.

New baby. Death. Any crisis.
I do what my mother taught me.
Butter. Sugar. Flour. Salt.
I bring this to you–this work of my hands,
this piece of my day, this sweetness,
all I can offer.

Today, Minneapolis burns
And sparks catch fire in New York,
Atlanta, here in DC.
My friend’s voice says
what I know but can’t know:
“This is my fear every time they leave me.”
Three beautiful sons, brilliant, alive.
I have little to offer. I do what I know.

*

Patricia Davis-Muffett (she/her) holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She was a 2020 Julia Darling Poetry Prize finalist and received First Honorable Mention in the 2021 Joe Gouveia OuterMost Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Limestone, Coal City Review, Neologism, The Orchards, One Art, Pretty Owl Poetry, di-verse-city (anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival), The Blue Nib and Amethyst Review, among others. She lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband and three children and makes her living in technology marketing.