How to Catch a Monarch
by
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch has an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Harrisburg Area Community College, Lancaster campus. Her book, Fleeing Back, is available through futurecyclepress.org or Amazon.com
. Her poems have been published in The Paterson Literary Review, The Atticus Review, War, Art and Literature, Confrontation, The Red River Review, San Pedro River Review, and Marco Polo Arts Magazine, among many others. Her poem “A 21st Century Hurricane: An Assay” was recently nominated for this year’s Pushcart Prize in Poetry. You can read some of her work online at pathanahoedosch.blogspot.com. Visit her website at phanahoedosch.weebly.com.
Smear your hands with pollen
and stand still like a tree
rooted into the lawn by a flowering
bush of purple blossoms like firecrackers,
and hold your hands, palms out,
motionless, pollen stains skyward.
If you stand long enough,
like a sycamore in your backyard,
like milkweed hushed in a doldrum before sunset,
one might land and settle softly
on your arced, stiff fingers, wanting the pollen,
but gracing you with a ripple
of an earthquake two continents away,
like all things of air and blossom
that wander into your embrace.
What do you think? Please send us your comments, including the name of the work you are commenting on.
Permalink to the Amarillo Bay issue containing this work.