Art: Torment by Robert Ferrier
Chore
She couldn’t say who closed off from whom,
or when the tangle of bright forsythia
at the side of the house thickened to impassable.
There is a cry in the cold engine.
And a cry in the hairdryer behind the bathroom door.
A cry in the new green.
Look – we’ve come to nothing
and we’ve done it with such diligence.
Keeping the receipts,
reconciling every slip.
She noticed wild violets had spread
fiercely across the lawn, how briefly they opened.
And their daughter’s disappointed face
as she walked down the driveway.
She neatened up the piles. She loaded
and unloaded the wash.
Then mowed down the grass.
About the author:
Alison Prine‘s debut collection of poems, Steel, was chosen for the Cider Press Review Book Award and came out in 2016. Steel was a finalist for the 2017 Vermont Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Harvard Review, Hunger Mountain, and Prairie Schooner among others. She lives in Burlington, Vermont and works as a psychotherapist.
Art: Torment by Robert Ferrier
In the artists’s words:
Hugo native Robert Ferrier is a retired university research administrator living in Norman. He received a BA in Journalism and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma. He has a novel at Kindle ebooks. He won the Norman Tree Photo contest twice. His poems have appeared in abstractmagazine.tv , Oklahoma Today, Dragon Poet Review, Blood & Thunder, Red River Review, Crosstimbers, Westview, Mid-America Poetry Review, The Exhibitionist and Walt’s Corner of the Long Islander. His photographs have appeared in several literary journals, including two covers. In 2007 the Norman Galaxy of Writers nominated him for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. In 2018 abstractmagazine.tv nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in poetry.