Poetry by Monica Rowley

                     Richard P J Lambert CC



I Come Washed and Ruddy

If we got back together,

I’d eat more greens
you’d read more poetry--

build better shelves for the books,
no need to drill out backstory.

(immediate flesh closeness brain
withdraw from the shock of remembrance)

Fruits are not favored these days
I’ve saved the best for you and me,

which means I come washed and ruddy
with a plate full of ripe and plump pears.

(to eat with the blackberries I just rinsed in the sink)

​



Old Voice Asking

—if old is twenty plus years--

(by law is)

…youth never wonders about 
the age of her age…

rushing time to pass

(we know
only the wise
see long known now
as both future and past)

Can we make friends that are friends for a life 
or is it just pieces of forgiveness picked up like gambling dice?

​

Monica Rowley teaches high school in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in the Irish literary journal, The Ogham Stone as well as in Yes, Poetry, and The Bread Loaf Journal. She has won numerous grants and awards, among them a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant and the Roxanne McCormick Leighton Fellowship for study at Bread Loaf. 

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