Gains & Losses
 
 
Progress

 
There were other signs: pictures
      falling from the walls, cracks
 
in the plaster, bananas going
      green to brown overnight.
 
No one noticed the dog's limp
      or how this season's white corn
 
tasted faintly of dishwater.  Some said
      it was all so gradual--the salt
 
clumped in the shaker, sunrise
      a little later--others whispered
 
among themselves; they had known
      it was coming.  What a shame someone
 
said, scratching the earth with a stick,
      what a terrible thing to do.
 






Copyright 2009,  Emari DiGiorgio

Emari DiGiorgio is an Assistant Professor at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and a poet-in-the-schools in New Jersey.  She is a recipient of a 2007 poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the winner of the 2006 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the following journals: The Barn Owl ReviewBuffalo CarpFeminist StudiesThe Grolier Prize AnthologyHermark 2009,  The Marlboro ReviewThe Paterson Literary ReviewUS 1 Worksheets,  and Whiskey Island.



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