Another fine poem by K.A. Hays

"All of us, every one,
will be dissolved not long from now.

Meanwhile we tuck away the winter's claims,
put photos in a box, look elsewhere."

[Read the entire poem here]

"White Garden at the End of My Summer"

Winter break is ending. Classes begin on Monday. I've enjoyed the down time--immensely--but I'm ready to move into the spring semester. My classes meet back-to-back, three days a week; I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to set aside some writing time on the odd mornings. We'll see.

Congratulations to Katie Hays: her manuscript, Dear Apocalypse, will be published in 2009 by Carnegie Mellon. Katie gave an incredible reading this fall at Bucknell Hall: excellent, complex poems. Her work has been published in some great journals lately, and was just up last week on Poetry Daily.

Today's chapbook is Suzanne Rhodenbaugh's The Shine on Loss, which won the 1997 Painted Bride Quarterly Chapbook Contest.

A sample poem:

White Garden at the End of My Summer

Almost every evening, though not more than one bloom
is granted, the moon vine out back will blossom.
I go to the garden and stare.

If it can make one bloom, why not more?
Why can it not be covered, a bounding
full-blossoming vine?

If I took what has been festering, the persistent
eggshells and stinging onion skins,
the slimy tomatoes and coffee grinds and rinds

and basted the roots of the moon vine
with the gloppy rot would I get more
moon vine blossoms?

The size of a hand,
one ghostly trumpet only?
My God, I’m trying to listen.