"In Perpetual Spring"Read about another entry on the list.
Amy Gerstler
I like the way this poem starts in the middle of a conversation: “Gardens are also good places / to sulk. You pass beds of / spiky voodoo lilies…” Spring does not encourage her to prolong the sulk – she is overtaken by a sudden sense of unity in nature. It is a bordering-on-perverse coming together, in which she allows a thistle (“queen of weeds”) to contribute to the harmony exercise. She also cracks a joke about the lion cuddling up with the lamb, and yet is serious; her poem works like a curative, modern psalm: “your secret belief / in perpetual spring, / your faith that for every hurt / there is a leaf to cure it.”
--Marshal Zeringue
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