Lois Marie Harrod
If Deception Be the Worm, Robins We
Grass shivers with worm-shock,
even on the road, we cock
our little brown heads to concrete
hear what we cannot beak,
the tick inside the turtle's shell,
flip earth on her back, quarter to twelve.
Then sun says, "Here's food."
The moon says, "Here's falsehood."
And the robin, what does the robin say,
the early bird catches the lay,
that song that lies, and eats.
If deception be the worm, robins we.
Think on it—gullet travels back to slake.
How can we discern quick from quake?
Bio
Lois Marie Harrod's chapbook Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest, and her book Brief Term, poems about teaching, is forthcoming from Black Buzzard Press. Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Press Poetry Prize. Previous publications include the chapbook Firmament(2007); the chapbook Put Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backward (2000); the chapbook This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); the chapbook Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991) Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She won her third poetry fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts in 2003. Over 350 of her poems have appeared in online and in print journals including American Poetry Review, Blueline, The MacGuffin, Salt, The Literary Review, Zone3. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.