WHAT HOLDS TOGETHER

Lynn Potts

What holds together
a country a land
rubber stretched between
mountains glass
lakes hoisting islands
with tie-dyed flags
corn-on-the-cob
and you have three ears— 
a country amiable with
Main Street’s drug store
or a diner where lipstick
on the waitress leaks
pink rivulets she can’t
see in a neoned mirror
and you wait for the postman
to bend down and bite
your lazy dog—
a country whose newsmen
hype snow storms
past all decent borders
where I often have
an inkling it can’t last but
still like in fourth grade
I raise my hand because
I think I have the answer. 

Poems by Lynne Potts have appeared in Paris Review, Southern Poetry Review, California Quarterly,Meridian, American Letters and Commentary, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Southwest Review, Backwards City Review, Oxford Magazine, Nimrod, 14 Hills, 2River, The Journal,  New Orleans Review, Southern Humanities Review, Gettysburg Review, Hot Metal Bridge, AGNI,  Cumberland Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere.  She won both the Backwards City Review prize for Poetry, and the Bowery Poetry Club HD Prize for individual poems and been a finalist for prizes offered by the following presses:  Ohio State University; New Issues; Crab Orchard Review; University of Wisconsin; Colorado Review; Alice James; Black Lawrence Press. She was also finalist for the Donald Justice Prize in 2009.

Her first book of poetry, Porthole View won the National Poetry Review Press prize in 2012.  She was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship that same year and received these other honors:  selected by Verse Daily; featured reader on WKCR radio; winner of the HD competition from Poets Project in NYC; winner of Backwards City Review Poetry Contest 2007.  She received scholarships to attend artist colonies in Chicago, Virginia, and Auvillar, France.

Lynne is Poetry Editor at AGNI (Boston University.) She conducts a weekly poetry workshop at BU called By Invitation Only.  She lives in Boston and New York.