Two Poems

Andrea Janelle Dickens

Desert Lightning

The air had a taste: light
and sharp, closed and latched.
It held tools to eat with.

Looming big, purple with shadow
Slim and rusty. So much color – purple
and the sky so blue it hurt.

Busted.

 Aubade

The old dislike moved away
and shied off from his woman, his woman—
a face inside clothes knew sometimes
a man wanted to be alone. The bees
couldn’t forget last night and his arguments
that came to nothing. In the darkness
at the gate drawn to tell him: Mornin’
ain’t a thing to be decided all at once.
Never. Never.

© Andrea Janelle Dickens

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Andrea Janelle Dickens is a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and currently lives in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, where she is a beekeeper, a ceramic artist, and teaches in the Writing Programs at Arizona State. Her work has appeared in streetcake, New South, Found Poetry Review, and Thin Air.