Reading
The book in my hands: opened, open
like the flowers in the small garden
outlined by stones, and the words on the page
a possibility, that you might be possible,
that it might not be that hard, that easy,
and then the neighbor’s voice over the fence,
I hear her as if she is a character in the poem,
tomorrow, I hear and I’ll be back,
and the tick, tick of a sprinkler
hushed by a bush.
You become the you against white paper,
alive, everything around me
becoming more difficult to ignore:
the moist grass,
greener than ever before,
the shadows of telephone wires
like slashes across my thighs,
and the way the sun moves
across the yard, highlighting
all that needs to be noticed.
Evelyn A. Lauer is an MFA student at Texas State University, where she is the poetry editor of Front Porch (www.frontporchjournal.com). Her poems have recently appeared in 42opus, Blood Orange Review, Conte, Effing Magazine, and are forthcoming in Sentence. She lives in Austin, TX with her husband and English Springer Spaniel, Belle.