Lee Upton

Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Adriana DiGennaro

Elizabeth Volpe

Lyn Lifshin

Simon Perchik

Gary Charles Wilkens

Dorianne Laux

The Moss Forest

To take on something of
this shaded stretch inside ourselves:
green pooled and draped.
We can't be like a flamingo turning
the color of the shrimp she eats.
The first time I came here
I was pregnant and wore
a coat the color of charcoal
and saw everything in the round:
the lining of the forest,
the lining of my coat.
Dull until unbuttoned
and then shimmering
as if to say:
we wear our lives wrong side out.

Lee Upton's poetry and fiction appear widely. Her fifth book of poems, Undid in the Land of Undone, is forthcoming in 2007 from New Issues Press. Her fourth book of literary criticism, Defensive Measures, appeared from Bucknell University Press.

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