KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Penny Perry
HE CALLED TO SAY
he will be home tonight.
Everything is lifting.
The fog in our valley,
the extra blanket I need
when I’m alone.
I wash my hair and wrap
it in a towel.
Tonight, my hair will fan
open, an anemone
on his shoulder.
A queen in a turban,
I hang wash on the line,
juice oranges and ruby
pomegranates, mix sugar
butter and cinnamon
in a bowl.
Only noon. Already
my nipples stand
at attention. I make
the bed with sun-dried
sheets.
Everything is rushing.
Pomegranate juice
from pitcher to glass,
water in a vase I fill
with lupines.
Almost dusk, my skirt
still on the line lifts
its hem.
PILLOWS
for Bill
My rented cabin closed up
all day. My pillow from home
fire on my back. Windows,
doors open.
Our first bedroom,
that knotty pine cathedral,
the sweet salt and yeast of us.
My body opening, a surprise
like the lipped fruit of a saguaro.
I sit outside on the balcony,
floating like a ship in the pines,
eat spicy spinach with a plastic fork.
Maybe you are resting on the pillow
that is the mate of mine.
A gray squirrel watches me.
I sip ice water. Another hour
until the room cools enough
for sleep.
Maybe you are in your studio tonight.
Your notes from the saxophone
settling on our new green figs.
Here the moon almost full,
curls into the curve of a pine.
Penny Perry has been widely published as a poet, most recently in Lilith and the San Diego Poetry Annual. Her fiction has appeared in Redbook and California Quarterly. She was the first woman admitted to The American Film Institute screenwriting program, and a film based on her script, A Berkeley Christmas ,aired on PBS.
A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee in both fiction and poetry, she was born and raised in Santa Monica, the setting for her first collection of poetry, Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage (Garden Oak Press, 2012), available at Amazon via CreateSpace.