Lois Marie Harrod
Jake's Song
You came along like Rachel, the golden pear
in a messy still life, the only one unbruised.
Your breath dipped into moonlight,
your scarf slipped the sun through the trees,
I loved you like the Virgin before God entered,
your Travelling Entertainer propped against your well,
And so I worked seven years for you and seven more,
I wanted to bear you like a flash on my wrist,
blaze you in front of the other suitors, tell them
you were the lily of my valley, make you believe
until at last you were mine, all those things I said true,
and for a while you thought I loved you. Yes, you did.
Bio
Lois Marie Harrod's most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June from Five Oaks. Her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and her 13th and 14th poetry collections, Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org.