Each night after his voice
corkscrewed through the phone,
I—lettuce-eater—pale to the point
of quivering, began dreaming of protein,
tidbits of flesh. My vegetarian heart
nourished on salad and slow-cooked
beets craved the taste of peacock
and lark. Now that I march to love’s tattoo,
I am no longer content with nibbling nuts
and parading around in the empty barrel
of righteousness, for love has flung
about my shoulders a swathe of lion’s teeth,
and has laid me out a picnic of raw possibilities.
Alice Friman’s sixth full-length collection is The View from Saturn, LSU Press. Her previous collection is Vinculum, LSU, for which she won the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry. She is a recipient of a 2012 Pushcart Prize, is included in Best American Poetry 2009, and has been published in fourteen countries. Friman lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College. Her podcast, Ask Alice, can be seen on YouTube. Her website is alicefriman.com.
A Quiet Courage 