Gossip

All the world may not love a lover
but they will be watching him.
Lucky Numbers 12,34,5,47,8,19

We like to think the world’s in love with love,
But actually it’s more in love with talk.
We like to think the world’s view is above,
But it is not—nor does it walk the walk

Of those who suffer, or go against all odds.
No. It’s the heat of public enterprise
That fuels the traveling talk to fantasize:
He left his wife? How many hotel beds?

Tongues now begin to click, and ears to listen
For someone else who knows the body’s heat.
For love is not just sex but moral lesson,
Depending on who’s happy and who’s not,
Depending on what is and isn’t said,
Depending on who’s watching up ahead.

by Kim Bridgford

Kim Bridgford is a professor of English at Fairfield University, the editor of Dogwood and Mezzo Cammin, and a resident faculty member of Fairfield’s new M.F.A. program on Enders Island, off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Undone, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps, nominated for the Poets’ Prize; In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records, winner of the Donald Justice Prize; and Take-Out: Sonnets about Fortune Cookies, forthcoming from David Robert Books. She is currently working on a three-book poetry/photography project with visual artist Jo Yarrington, focusing on journey and sacred space in Iceland, Venezuela, and Bhutan. A former Connecticut Professor of the Year and a two-time nominee for U.S. Professor of the Year, she was the 2007 Connecticut Touring Poet.

The Happy Heart

Everyone distrusted the Happy Heart. They
said she was faking her constant content. All those
lemons to lemon liqueur, sour grapes to Beaujolais.
Nothing but a tanked-up Pollyanna, mega-dosing

on Prozac. Every egg in her basket sunny-side up,
rose-colored glasses raging ruby-red, blear-
begone. All her ails to the wind. Someone spied her up
in her attic making a silk hearse out of a sow’s tear.

Others spotted her in the middle of the square,
spinning flaws into gold. It had to stop. She was
infecting them all. The barber had begun weaving

hair into gloves, the cook turning bones into chairs,
and now the teacher had blown a dull spark
into a feverish flame. Time for quarantine.

by Lois Harrod

Lois Marie Harrod's ninth book Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Poetry Prize. Over 300 of her poems have been published in literary journals from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She is presently teaching creative writing at The College of New Jersey.