By Fay Dillof

Featured Art by Ashura Lewis

who took the bait––
hoped––

and who is now trying to reverse
the motion, thread the hook out through the lip––

I see you
waiting all the time, waiting, and . . .

Well, actually that’s all of it. What I have for you:
I see you. I do.

I––the sherbet sky,
rush of birds, etc., etc.

About what you’re waiting for––
no, I don’t––don’t know––if it will ever materialize,

sorry.
But you’re thirsty?

There’s lemonade in the refrigerator.
To be blunt––

as a sunflower––
it’s true––that bumper sticker on your neighbor’s car––

You are not alone.
A saying which, incidentally, started with me––

I mean, with us––
you, life too.

But I have a tendency to hammer
on the obvious.

To be blunt.
As a sunflower

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Fay Dillof’s poetry has appeared in Best New Poets, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, FIELD, and Green Mountains Review. Her poems have won the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize and the Dogwood Literary Prize and have been supported by a John Ciardi Scholarship from Bread Loaf, a Claudia Emerson Scholarship from Sewanee, and an Anne Bastille Residency. Dillof lives with her husband and daughter in Northern California, where she works as a psychotherapist.