A Touch by Rose McLarney

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 24, 2014   A Touch   Rose McLarney

We rinse the glasses from which we will drink   affordable whiskey with scotch or absinthe,   my love and I, the less than a swallow left of good   liquor scenting the whole cocktail. What intoxication   we afford each other cannot be excess or impure.   *   A dried-out, overused river runs through, or rather,   idles in, our small city where we never intended to settle.   Birds alight on odorous pools stranded between mudflats, a baptism   in reverse—the body that enters proclaiming the water clean.   They dip down plumed heads to say this is enough.   *   The pigeons, so adaptable, delight in dropped scraps. While we—   however many lovers late in life —rub the rims of Sazeracs   with an orange’s remaining peel, arousing a perfume.            Copyright © 2014 by Rose McLarney. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Since moving to Oklahoma, and away from the rivers by which I have always oriented, I became interested in dryness—drought, dams, also prohibitions about alcohol. My morning run is along the Arkansas, a river which often holds no water at all, but somehow I have come to love seeing what is laid bare there, and, because the state sells 3.2 beer at room temperature, I have begun to make my own cocktails, another new pleasure. How strangely happy I am, so: this poem of concession.” — Rose McLarney     Rose McLarney is the author of Its Day Being Gone (Penguin Books, 2014). She teaches at Oklahoma State University and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Most Recent Book by McLarney   Its Day Being Gone (Penguin Books, 2014) "Happiness" by Jane Kenyon "At the Blue Note" by Pablo Medina "Compassion IV" by Noelle Kocot Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038