Two poems by Antonia Clark

Stray

The gray cat again,
slinking past the twisted
maple, ears straining
toward what
you can't imagine.
Its tail announces,
warns. Teeth and claws
practice needling, meditate
on what can be torn.

The earth wobbles,
the fence stays. Cat
never pauses or glances,
suffers no fools,
will make you a believer
in a single crossing
of your manicured lawn,
remind you of your place
in the wheeling
universe. Everything
for miles around
in proper perspective.

====================

My Brief History of Yellow

Squash, wax beans,
puddled yolks

dandelion-stained hands
of insatiable children

the kitchen walls,
the jaundiced eye

the scum on the river,
the skin of the dead.


Author bio:

Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont, and is co-administrator of an online poetry workshop, The Waters. Recent poems have appeared in The 2River View, Anderbo, Apparatus Magazine, The Cortland Review, Soundzine, Umbrella, and elsewhere. She loves French food and wine, and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.