Theft [Poetry]

This is a poem by Lois Marie Harrod.

You know the myth—

how this coyote or that raven

decides to steal something,

maybe a coat of many colors

maybe the sun,

maybe the sun’s underpants

the ones with porcupine quills,

but whatever it is,

the theft causes catastrophe,

an old father cannot stop weeping

an old world is flooded

an old mother refuses

to plant the wheat.

For weeks or months or years

light does not return

though the old preachers grow angry

preaching that the sun 

is somewhere dancing 

naked in the dark hills.

What do you have to lose?

What have you lost?

---

Lois Marie Harrod’s 17^th collection Woman is forthcoming from Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey. Link to her online work is found on www.loismarieharrod.org.

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