Author: J. Allyn Rosser

J. Allyn Rosser’s fourth collection of poems, Mimi’s Trapeze, appeared in 2014 from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her work has been awarded the Morse Prize, the New Criterion Poetry Prize, and Poetry magazine’s Bock and Wood prizes. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. Her work has appeared in five editions of the Best American Poetry series, and in such journals as Poetry, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Georgia Review. She teaches at Ohio University.

Riches

I remember with the vividness
of this lime and mango gelato
how content I used to be
some thirty years ago
living one block from the library,
taking the grimy bus
one and a half hours to my abject job
returning each dusk to my abject apartment
in a strange city: no phone, no TV,
one unreliable friend.

I used to buy those huge cans of V-8
when I could: 3 inches of juice per day.
Lettuce, lentils and bread.

Riches full post

(311 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

Farewell Reception

You are invited Friday evening to celebrate Professor John
_______’s retirement from this faculty, from committees
and gradebooks and tedious discussions of nuances
which he now views as the exclusive properties
of those who can recall the words which seem to him
unreliably accessible; the minute his sentences begin they recede
like cities from a plane window;
……………………………………………………now he is on a plane
different from the one we inhabit; his has sudden
trapdoors in the air, somewhat like Chutes ’n Ladders –
a game he likes anew, and Solitaire, he likes that too.
Please RSVP re John’s withdrawal from this and, gradually,
let us not mince words, from his other faculties.

Farewell Reception full post

(297 words, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)