Dawn Potter: Ode to the Haverford Park Apartments

Stubbed-out cigarettes & the Ramones playing loud at 2 a.m. on a stereo

that the guy you’re with paid for by flipping burgers all summer & it

has the best speakers he wastes so much time telling you how great

these speakers are & you are annoyed you are like Take my clothes off

but you don’t say it out loud because christ isn’t it obvious and then

finally he falls silent & through the open window you smell the first

roses beginning to open & the night air is thick & who thought

to plant rosebushes outside this yellow-brick rattrap but now

suddenly the overhead light starts to blink the way it does because

probably the building is shortly destined to catch on fire though you

forget to worry & the Ramones fall silent & you can hear the first

sparrows waking up & your hands are clammy & your breath comes

fast & skin is such an awkward strange thing maybe you’ve never

noticed skin before what about breathing was there ever anything so

beautiful as breathing & eyes how can eyes shout you had no idea

four hands clutching & this fear that is also recklessness & outside

the sparrows the roses & inside a coal heats and glows it is hell it is

wonder it is clamor it is glory

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Copyright 2023 Dawn Potter

Dawn Potter is the author or editor of nine books of prose and poetry–most recently, the poetry collection Accidental Hymn. Her memoir, Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton, won the 2010 Maine Literary Award in Nonfiction. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband, the photographer Thomas Birtwistle.