Dawn Potter: Late April
Ghosts shimmered on the broken doorstep,
rising through dust to become my own new skin
Dawn Potter: Sleeping with the Cat
the bossiest boyfriend I have ever entertained,
crammed between my knees, purring himself into glory
Dawn Potter: Arcadia, 1939
warmth of bread baking, a cardinal alight in a branching
oak, white bed, linens floating in air, a table
laid in an arbor’s shade—
Carlene M. Gadapee: Accidental Hymn by Dawn Potter
Dawn’s speakers are the collective voice of the common person: she captures the hard-working, angry, sad, loving, celebratory voices of the Maine woods and coast, the hills of Appalachia, the house-bound and the homesick…
Dawn Potter: For David
The world is personal,
Dawn says. And what heart-scalded person
would think otherwise
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Dawn Potter: Island Weather
headlights painting streaks of rain
on my pale window, and still
the torrent comes faster, faster—bluster, leak,
and squall.
Dawn Potter: Heat Wave
a squirrel is hurling insults, and beneath his screeches the cicadas
insist and sigh, insist and sigh, unmoved by his grandiloquent snit.
Dawn Potter: Mother to Son
Always with the video games when you’re sad,
as if the gunshots are manna, or music,
which isn’t to say I think you’re planning
to shoot up a grocery store—no, no
Dawn Potter| Nocturne: A Marriage
In the ancient night
the vines of summer choke
breath choke memory
blooms fatten and fall
Dawn Potter: Senior Photo, 1982
They say there is a me
who is beautiful but I
snub her in the chalk-dust
hallways, on the bronzed
fields.
Vox Populi: You are invited
You are invited to attend a reading by some of the most talented poets in the country. The time is 8pmET Tuesday, March 2.
Dawn Potter| Song: The Famous Vision of America
an emptiness, too, in the bright
flicker of a cardinal on my back fence
Dawn Potter: Soul
Today, a bird invisible among the trees
cries Jericho Jericho Jericho O no O no
all the afternoon long.
Vox Populi 