Poetry Series Deborah Ager - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Deborah Ager(1971) Deborah Ager is an American poet. <b>Life</b> Ager founded the poetry magazine known as 32 poems or 32 Poems Magazine in 2003 with the poet John Poch. She was educated at the University of Maryland (B.A.) and the University of Florida (M.F.A.). Her writing has appeared in New England Review, The Georgia Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Barn Owl, North American Review, and Best New Poets 2006. She has received fellowships and/or scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She was a Walter E. Dakin fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference as well as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. Her manuscript, Midnight Voices, was a semifinalist for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize in 2007 before being accepted for publication by Cherry Grove Collections. In 2011, she edited the poetry anthology Poetry Doesn't Need You with the poet John Poch and scholar Bill Beverly. The book is forthcoming in 2012. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 Alone Over the fence, the dead settle in for a journey. Nine o'clock. You are alone for the first time today. Boys asleep. Husband out. A beer bottle sweats in your hand, and sea lavender clogs the air with perfume. Think of yourself. Your arms rest with nothing to do after weeks spent attending to others. Your thoughts turn to whether butter will last the week, how much longer the car can run on its partial tank of gas. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 Dear Deborah, They tell me that your heart has been found in Iowa, pumping along Interstate 35. Do you want it back? When the cold comes on this fast, it's Iowa again-- where pollen disperses evenly on the dented Fords, where white houses sag by the town's corn silos, where people in the houses sicken on corn dust. Auctions sell entire farms. It's not the auctions that's upsetting but what they sell, the ragged towel or the armless doll, for a dollar. I hear they've found an eye of yours in Osceola calling out to your mouth in Davis City. That mouth of yours is in the bar, the only place left in town, slow dancing and smoking. It's no wonder you look so pale. Ever wish you'd done more with your thirty years? Seeing you last week I wonder if you crave that sky filled with the milky way or the sight of Amish girls in blue at sunset against wheat-colored prairie grass. Here, the trees are full of gossip. They're waiting to see what you'll do next. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 Morning We are what we repeatedly do. &mdash;Aristotle You know how it is waking from a dream certain you can fly and that someone, long gone, returned and you are filled with longing, for a brief moment, to drive off the road and feel nothing or to see the loved one and feel everything. Perhaps one morning, taking brush to hair you'll wonder how much of your life you've spent at this task or signing your name or rising in fog in near darkness to ready for work. Day begins with other people's needs first and your thoughts disperse like breath. In the in-between hour, the solitary hour, before day begins all the world gradually reappears car by car. Anonymous submission. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 Night In Iowa Nimbus clouds erasing stars above Lamoni. Jaundiced lights. Silos. Loose dogs. Cows whose stench infuses the handful of homes, whose sad voices storm the plains with longing. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6 Night: San Francisco Rain drenches the patio stones. All night was spent waiting for an earthquake, and instead water stains sand with its pink foam. Yesterday's steps fill in with gray crabs. Baritone of a fog horn. A misty light warns tankers, which block the green after-sunset flash. My lover's voice calls to others in his restless sleep. The venetian blinds slice streetlights, light coils around my waist and my lover's neck, dividing him into hundredths. Would these fractions make me happier? My hands twist into a crocodile. My index finger the tooth that bites Gauguin's Tahiti. My thumb is the head feather of a California quail crying chi-ca-go. Night barely continues. Is this the building staying still? Is this hand the scorpion that will do us in? A few of Irving Street's sycamores will blue the air come morning. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7 Santa Fe In Winter The city is closing for the night. Stores draw their blinds one by one, and it's dark again, save for the dim infrequent streetlight bending at the neck like a weighted stem. Years have built the city in layers: balustrades filled in with brick, adobe reinforced with steel, and the rounded arches smoothed with white cement. Neighborhoods have changed the burro trails to streets, bare at night— no pedestrians, no cars, no dogs. With daylight, the houses turned galleries and stores turned restaurants open— the Navajos wrapped in wool crowd the Palace of the Governors plaza to sell their handmade blankets, silver rings, and necklaces to travelers who will buy jewelry as they buy everything— another charming history for themselves. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8 Summer Nights The factory siren tells workers time to go home tells them the evening has begun. When living with the tall man whom I didn't love, I would wander the streets, dreaming of Italy. Trekking the handful of avenues with him, he would say look there between pink cobblestones, there's manure like mortar. The sweet smell of it Wednesday nights, the night before auction, when the misery of cows greets me heading home through town. Lake quiets, tired of my lies. When will I tell truths again? The siren. My love is home. Nights, we stay in and X the days. Deborah Ager www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9