An Ordinary Day by Julia Caroline Knowlton

Swallowed by the sick fluorescent glow

of a computer screen all day,

I stare at my supermarket lilies—

fists of closed, perfume snow in a crystal vase.

I feel the tight row of rubies in my ring,

remembering our bare animal silence

as you slid it on my hand, in France,

a stone sea town we may not see again.

Suddenly it gets late.  I leave the screen

to press my pen into a crumbling book,

wet ink bleeding in a soft cotton page,

 words slipping through the bars of a cage.

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Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College. She has an MFA in poetry (Antioch) and a PhD in French Literature (UNC). An Academy of American Poets prize winner, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year for her 2018 chapbook, The Café of Unintelligible Desire (Alice Greene). Her second chapbook, Poem at the Edge of the World, will be published by Alice Greene in 2022.