So far, so good with A Winter's Tale. I'm very excited to imagine so many of my friends holed up with this play in their various cupboards and burrows.

One commenter did mention that, for some reason, the blog would only let him post as Anonymous, though he didn't necessarily want to be invisible. I have no idea why this might be so; but if you are having posting problems, let me know and I'll post for you.

Today is my husband Tom's 45th birthday. It is, as it always is on January 10, extremely cold, but at least this year the electricity is working. Making birthday dinner without power can be challenging, although the snowpile outside the door does, in a pinch, work as an ice-cream freezer.

Dinner tonight: artichokes with lemon dressing; fried tiny goat chops breaded with parmesan; potatoes, garlic, and parsley; green salad with cucumbers and shiitake mushrooms, pinot noir, chocolate cake, cognac.

The Bed, from Christmas at the Ramada

Dawn Potter

It lurks round every Ramada corner,

this bed, single-minded as Sparta.

Once the door chunks shut behind them,

once they inspect all the drawers and snigger

at the Oriental-ish art screwed

to the beige wallpaper, once they suck down

a quick roach at the icy casement,

time runs out for everything but the bed

and K and O—the gravitational pull

of this motel mattress, Charlemagne-

sized, its flowered coverlet severe;

a bed royally firm yet dim as a cave

in the shadow of the light fixtures.

Sex is the heart of the matter:

and perhaps, thinks O,

there is something vital in ugliness,

this reduction to famine,

we two thrown together like phantom

Barbarellas, and all the while the ice machine

crashes in the hall, handyman snowmen

whirr and clack, the fat guys in the lounge

switch to Friars hockey and whiskey sours,

and a tow truck finally drags a smashed-up

Chevy from the parking lot.

In the distance, a siren.

K leans back against the somber headboard,

silken and shy, open-eyed.

What magic to be awaited by a man

whose every rib she must have kissed

at least once in the half-life

they’ve dreamed away.

Though this bed demands a new,

a starker obeisance—

This stripped-down polyester

battlement, this outcast star—

No shepherd awake to guard his ewe lamb.

[forthcoming in How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010)]