my red hair my aloneness my June
my window my stone sidewalks my evening
my Methodist chapel abandoned my control
my lack of control my cows trundling home
my life postponed my bin-men my trash
my pin-up Australian Penrose postcard my known customers
my unknown my rain my Main Road my newspaper
my elbows my eyes grown heavy my somnolent letters
my cigarette my pursed lips my smoke cascading
my red hair my post man my allure
–
Claire Keyes is the author of What Diamonds Can Do (WordTech, 2015), The Question of Rapture (Mayapple Press, 2008), and the chapbook Rising and Falling (Riverstone Press, 1999). Her poems and reviews have appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Persimmon Tree, Comstock Review, and on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. She is professor emerita at Salem State University and lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.