by Amy Lemmon

“To write these days is to avoid telling people how angry I am.”
—Daniel Nester


Behold the Rottweiler in its cage, behold homemade cornhusk
ornaments, behold the photo of a Jaymar miniature piano,

behold the galaxy of knees at noon, facing the maestro’s
fragrance. Behold, behold, I stand at the door and knock-knock-knock

Answer the call, be real now, be here & calculate
cost vs. bennies, don’t be that person who waits

until the last chorus to join in. Makes you look careless.
Care less. Rejection is a state, like catalepsy, to move through.

Behold the scroll, the wretched bankroll, the double tongue
summoning his minions to court, calculate the chorus

and ford the spring, a small thing, mysterious as amaryllis—
a little water, a little sun. Behold my process of (pre)tending.

Sweetpea, the voice will always call, a murmur or hum,
a spring burbling or a dammed-up flood. Locally sourced,

unforced, double-spaced & tortured into shape. Copyright
the Year of Our Lord blank blankety-blank, Amen.

Behold the ample galaxy, a naked miracle through the blinds.
Clean your damn windows and the bulb will bloom.

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Amy Lemmon is the author of five poetry collections, including Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press) and The Miracles (C&R Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is Professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology-SUNY, where she teaches writing, literature, and creativity studies. She lives in Astoria, Queens.

by Amy Lemmon

The East River looks frozen, choked

eddies pulling in oppositions.

Cumulocirrus skies leak blue in spots.

You are not waiting at home

as you were so long, long ago,

solid point ’round which my currents churned.

Picking my way through stepped-on

frozen slush, I push my heart rate,

building stamina for the long haul.

How many more miles without you

or any other You? Families pass

on the promenade. The men

have all married younger wives.

The women are plush and beautiful,

their lips open delicately when kissed.

I have not forgotten how I had

to teach you softness, the relaxed tongue,

the release that made you squirm.

Spring is so late this year

we may never thaw again. Hard

to believe, harder to bend not break.

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Amy Lemmon is the author of three poetry collections—Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008), Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009), and The Miracles (C&R Press, 2019)—and co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of the chapbooks ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is Professor and Chairperson of English and Communication Studies at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-editor (with Sarah Freligh) of The CDC Poetry Project.