Poetry – Issue 7 | November 2009
The Lean Season
by Arlene Ang
Untended lawns bloat with daisies.
My daughter packs my clothes for Portofino—
where seagulls bicker over fish,
and flowers, plucked before budding,
are sold for loose change in the streets.
There, the hotel attendant will collect
my beauty case. On bolder days, the dropped
handkerchief. Himself a relic on carpet
and embalmed in rich wallpaper. I’ll tip him
to eavesdrop on the November journey,
how my left breast wilted one morning
under hospital sheets, a one-night stand.
There is no shame in metastasis. I’ll taunt him
to finger the cavity of my loss, watch
as his hands slip into the luggage grips.
About the author
Arlene Ang is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being a collaborative work with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. See more of her work here.
Read our current issue, Issue 7 | November 2009:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
