Joe-Anne McLaughlin | Pollen (in Prada)

Pollen (in Prada)

See how the green grains
secret themselves into gray
sheaths when it rains —
as languorously as verdigris
seeds bronze. And we can breathe.
We can breathe,
at least, until they strip,
refreshed and lusting again
for hot-green sex, and we
sneeze. God bless spring!

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Joe-Anne McLaughlin has an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University. She has taught at Syracuse and Stockton College in New Jersey. Her books include The Banshee Diaries, published in 1998 by Exile Editions, Ltd., in Toronto, Canada; Black Irish Blues, published by Brooding Heron Press in 2000; and Jam, published by BOA Editions, Ltd., in 2001. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. She currently resides in Munnsville, New York, where she lived with her husband Hayden Carruth, who died in September 2008.