R o c k S a l t P l u m R e v i e w Anniversary Issue: Winter 2005
Nancy A. Henry - Two Poems
Bulletin
The evening sky is a
dragonfly wing, slick of oil on the rain-damp street.
Selected desperations begin their nightly rounds,
lust hawks hope on every crooked
doorstep. What if you stop staggering towards that railing,
finger the cinnamon scent of her just enough .
the endless doorways opening, become
a red stallion, ivory fingers twined in
that flying mane? Will there be another city built in clouds, the walls
composed of bone and grit, windowpanes the corneas of
hummingbirds annealed with the sap of night-blooming jasmine?
In the purple breeze: ginger, matricide, feathers.
We pray the house deflects the storm. We
know the shield is not impenetrable.
Nancy A. Henry
Nancy A. Henry of Gray, Maine is the author of four chapbooks: Brie Fly, Anything Can Happen, Hard (the latter two published by MuscleHead Press) and Erosion. Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals - over 200 publications in the US, UK and Australia. She has received four Pushcart Prize nominations and an Atlanta Review International Merit Award. Nancy teaches at Southern Maine Community College and works as a patient advocate. In a former life, she was an attorney in the field of child protection. Nancy and Alice were co-editors and publishers of the Maine poetry anthology A Sense of Place in 2002.
Writing is so peculiar and complex an act - making marks which represent sounds which represent thoughts.
