by Lois Roma-Deeley

i.
Red sand and clay silt cover my eyes—
a penny for your lost thoughts.

ii.
At noon, midnight weeps
on the other side of the world.

iii.
Exactly.
Before I spoke the word, your mind says it.

iv.
The dream body sleeps
far away from home.

v.
Why do you insist
I do not exist?

vi.
A window frames
orange blossoms and cut grass.

vii.
Twenty two enormous sentences written on a papyrus scroll
hidden at the bottom a large jar in a desert of the country you will never visit.

viii.
(Now of course one of us has to say:
“Oh, what is it?”)

xi.
Draw a line
then divide by 2.

x.
A bird bursts from your throat.
My fist flies through broken glass.

Lois Roma-Deeley, winner of the Samuel T. Coleridge Literary Prize, is the author of three collections of poetry, Rules of Hunger, northSight and High Notes. Her third collection, High Notes, was named a 2011 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Roma-Deeley has won numerous awards and honors for her poetry and has published in literary journals nationwide. Her poems appear in twelve anthologies, most recently in Villanelles (​Everyman’s Library, Pocket Poets Series). www.loisroma-deeley.com