Another Monday . . . dark, quiet, cold. My house is full of sleeping bodies that will shortly be a hectic rush of showers and breakfast. Then they'll suddenly dissolve into the world. And I will be alone again, rattling around the the doll-house, humming my private tune.

Today, I hope I'll be finishing an academic editing project. Perhaps my optimism is misplaced. But if it isn't, and I do get it done, then I'll have a bit of space for Rilke and Dante and my own writing. Or perhaps the house party will reconvene earlier than expected, and I'll be back to my Aunt & Sister job: slicing bread, boiling eggs, pouring tea, shaking my head over the iniquities of school administrators.

Here's a poem I wrote for my sister. It came out in Green Mountains Review a few years ago.

Eight-Track Tape Player

Dawn Potter 

                        for Heather Potter

The sun slants his hapless rays

through spiderwebbed glass,

and amid the hills of newspaper

rumpling up from the tablecloth

our tight-lipped mama unpacks a miracle

fresh from the S & H Green Stamps Store—

a glory of chrome and veneer,

five fat knobs, two speakers, a slot like a mouth.

Pity the ravaged radio

hunched beside this marvel.

Blinking in the soiled daylight,

our grandpop makes small

kind noises, though in truth

every machine he loves, tractor or Frigidaire,

is broken down and rusted out.

Behind him, in a chipped chair,

our granny slits a new packet of Luckies

with her long thumbnail

and erects a wall of smoke.

Like always, like always,

there’s just the two of us dropped at the altar—

you and me—magicked, rapt, enchanters.

How many rhymes have we sung

to the frog in the well? how many idols

suborned?—a slick wet calf born under moonlight,

the musty sweet smell of a grain bin,

road wind in our mouths and in our hair.

But this—

this is different.

This is the modern world.