Talking About the Weather: poems by Liz Ahl. Number 2 in Volume Three of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.

Cover image: antique quilting fabric, Pennsylvania. Series design by Ron Mohring.

Published: July 15, 2012 [49 copies]
30 pages
$9.00  S O L D   O U T

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Liz Ahl is the author of the chapbooks Luck (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), which won the 2011 New Hampshire Literary Awards “Reader’s Choice” Award in Poetry, and A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, which won the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest. Her poems have also appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She teaches writing at Plymouth State University and lives in Holderness, New Hampshire, where the weather is often very interesting.

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Front Door 

Only a stranger
would try to use this door.

In a corner, a hint of splintered straw
where a nest of mud
once pasted it to the frame.

The confident knocking
of the UPS man,
unanswered.

Beneath three seasons’ pine needles: 
a frayed an graying welcome mat.

The census worker pauses
in the driveway, uncertain.

Hanging from one rusty nail,
the desiccated remains of a floral wreath
woven by hand.

This painted wood expands and contracts
with the seasons.

From the stoop, the neighbor’s orange cat fixates
on the wood pewee–a frantic gray blur
of nest making.

The house’s game face,
its best foot forward, its vestigial
“May I help you?” mouth,
unopened.

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• S O L D   O U T. Thank you for supporting this author and series!
• Liz has two poems here at poetserv.org
• Purchase Liz Ahl’s new book, Beating the Bounds