Love Poem #7

posted Sep 15, 2015

The peony buds swelled for days
as the ants unfastened the blooms
now a shower has left them
lying open in the grass.

If I buy you a card
with a picture of a door
will you understand?

I am trying to think of a hundred words
for this summer wind against my skin.

So far, the card is blank inside.
A white sheet hanging in a rainstorm.

The door with no lock
no handles. No hands.

Alison Prine's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Prairie Schooner among others. Her first collection of poems was chosen for this year's Cider Press Review Book Award and will be published in January 2016.

She lives in Burlington, Vermont where she works as a psychotherapist.

Prine’s poem “My Practice” also appears in this issue.