Antonia Clark

Among Pines in Winter

Anticipation leads you deeper,
makes you both eager and wary

the way a lone bird watches the sky
as if it were a mirror

waiting to appear to itself.



Shades of Gray

Swollen clouds rolling in, thunder
complaining to the west.
Cat shadow. Mouse's tail.
Silvery skin of the limp mackerel.
The damp wool coat of dusk.
Dull sheen of an old man's eyes
brimming with gratitude.
The dead woman's sweater
folded on a shelf.
The wolf. The distance.

[an editor's favorite, 2012]

Futility Boundary

The point at which the cure's no more
effective than the placebo

where all forms of matter revert
to their dreams, your old life
begins to melt

wax dripping into a dish, blood
into a basin

your name a stranger to your lips,
a foreign phrase
with no known translation

your hands transparent and cupped,
unable to grasp or open into a wave.


CP

Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Vermont and co-administers an online poetry workshop, The Waters. Her poems have appeared in Anderbo, Apparatus, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Softblow, and elsewhere. She loves French picnics and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.