by Verandah Porche
Double-take in the dark.
Sleet needles me
un-knits my sleep: it’s that tick
below think itch within speech
the tsk of task.
Ice seeps back to rain—
Won’t coat a stick
slur a wheel.
Two fluorescent hunters
cruise toward dawn
in a bronze Dart.
A hip flask loosens their intent.
The cats yowl for tinned meat
while rodents drunk on compost
snicker by the chimney.
In this sumac-red farmhouse
my young sack out
and I’m easy: la-de-dah
no axe to grind.
Day takes shape:
boughs bear globes
of pop-it beads
pretty and cheap.
Swank heat blows up
the grates: propane
Yahweh made
invisible and full of himself
comes clear from elsewhere
pricey as love or war.
Based in rural Vermont since 1968, Verandah Porche has published The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career. She has written poems and songs to accompany her community through a generation of moments and milestones. As a teacher and facilitator, she has created collaborative writing projects in schools and nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Her work has been featured on NPR’s “Artbeat,” on public radio stations around New England and in the Vermont State House. The Vermont Arts Council awarded her a Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life in 1998, and a recent grant to support the preparation of poetry for publication and performance.