Peter Davis © 2005 All Rights Reserved
Peter Davis © 2005 All Rights Reserved
A Lengthy Convalescence
“Sadness, with its hundred silver feet, rushes forward.” – Emma Andijewska
Sadness —
with its 365 sunsets colorless as vodka,
its nights heavy as black bread;
divided by 7 ironic evenings
blowing smoke rings
into the rose pattern of paper
peeling from the walls;
then multiplied
by the interval of silence
between the muted thud of a sparrow
striking a closed window
and a single branch
tapping lightly as a fingernail
on the cracked glass.
Sadness —
with its 12 or 13 predictable lunar phases,
its 52 wrapped and ribboned Sundays;
aspiring vaguely toward grief
or happiness,
believing in theories
and trusting in omens —
the fading circles beneath your eyes
in which you can neither swim
nor drown.
Do Gentry won third prize and two honorable mentions in the 2004 Sacramento Poetry Center’s annual competition, and has had poems published in Sulphur River Literary Review, Ekphrasis, Fourteen Hills, Rhino, The Ledge, and elsewhere. Her chapbook entitled The Nightmare Parable was the winner of the 2004 Permafrost competition.