Deborah Fries| Having Visions Again

Having Visions Again. Poems by Deborah Fries, selected by Steve Bellin-Oka & Ron Mohring as Number 22 in our Keystone Chapbook Series.

Publication:  April 21, 2021 [100 copies]
21 pages
ISBN 978-1-949333-77-0
$ 9.00


Cover image: “Let’s Go See the Mexican Dogwood,”
monotype by  Deborah Fries (2018).

Deborah Fries grew up in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, spent two decades in Milwaukee, then returned to the state in 1994. She currently lives and works as a freelance editor and writer in suburban Philadelphia. In 2006, Fries was selected by the late Galway Kinnell as Montgomery County Poet Laureate. She is the author of two books of poetry, published by Kore Press, Tucson: Various Modes of Departure and The Bright Field of Everything. Fries is a printmaker affililated with the 705 West Printshop+Gallery in Jenkintown, PA.

Leaving Florida 

When you were young, you read Dying in the Sun
and still remember how fleets of metal angels,
air ambulances, wait to carry parents through
bouncy clouds, return them to Glenside, Glen Cove, 
Glencoe, Glendale, to transition. Who books a flight
between their last Cubano and sweet tea, last murex
found at low tide, afternoon aquacise or bridge?
Someone does. Someone says bring her or take me
Home, and in that taking, neither healed nor saved,
they are transported from their dream of pink stucco
and palms to a practical place, kid-close and cold.
Out the window, tiny snow falls. Inside, their IV drips.
It is unclear who wanted this final move, but here you
are, replanted, as if Florida had been a long vacation.