Poem of the Day
Consecutive Preterite
By Jessica Laser
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
For a long time she pretended
she could remember. There were little tricks
involved, schemes and inventions, or so we thought
In Ohio, the untried earth lifts
To coax pale horses from the edge of a wet, blue field.
White apple blossoms are unhurried
That road
got no people.
That road.
for dinner, vacation, carnality,
I took up an ancient text on military strategy
hoping to find the miracle subterfuge,
One Easter, the last chords of our closing hymn
still buzzing in the upright strings of the Hope Church School
piano, our black-robed pastor, fresh from his sermon,
The streetlights bent
the sleet streams as I went
up the deserted Rue des Deux Ponts,
When I caught sight of them, the secret lovers,
I had been watching the pink-edged white blossoms
in the garden below
When I build the fire in the living room
and unroll my sleeping bag beside it
it dawns on me I’m not
In the mornings we’re in the dark;
even at the end of June
the zucchini keep on the sill.
Again the wind
flakes gold-leaf from the trees
and the painting darkens—