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      September 28, 2018John Lazear OkrentAfter Seeing a Picture in the New York Times …

      Behind her, a potted ivy climbs the yellow wall.
      Ivy is not the plant
      but its loneliness.
      Wife is not the woman
      but her cup.
      The house feels empty as dumb
      hunger without him in it.
      The engine of a plane overhead
      is the same sound
      her stomach makes.
      The shadows lay themselves
      down the table and soon
      darkness takes the room.
      The neighbors flick on lights
      and pull the shades.
      No shame in nature
      save what’s in man.
      Her hands touch
      each other.
      The world turns like an ache
      in the belly of the sky.

      from #60 - Summer 2018

      John Lazear Okrent

      “I am a poet and a family doctor in Tacoma, Washington. I wrote this poem during the brutal and clumsy roll-out of one of the first iterations of the ‘Travel Ban.’ The poem came from an ache, which is where a lot of poems come from, I think.”

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