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.

Evie Ivy | Delivering Green

Delivering Green

No monster chase,
green fills me with breath,
the color of okay to move.

They say in another planet
there might be black grass,
but here we walk on green,
the color of new.

Some will say they don’t look
good in green.
But there are different shades,
wrap yourself in summer.

Green, the color of everywhere,
and of a million smiles.
The verdant truths I love.

I get the most breath,
walking on green,
the color of now.

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Evie Ivy hosts The Green Pavilion Poetry Event, one of the New York’s longest running literary series, at the Green Pavilion Restaurant in Brooklyn. She is the author of four poetry collections, including her latest, The Platinum Moon, from Dark Light Publishing, which features her illustrations. You can read three of her poems in the current issue (#7) of Home Planet News Online. A dancer by profession, she continues to teach dance and often performs with students in her productions of Dance of the Word, a popular dance and poetry event.
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