Mary Krane Derr

Mary Krane Derr recently received an award from the Poetry Center of Chicago. She presented selections from her poem cycle The Raveling Back Into the Text of Her Genesis at the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions, Cape Town, South Africa. Her e-mail address is MaryKDerr@aol.com

BUMPERSTICKER KOAN

Honk

If You Love Silence

MANY UNHAPPY RETURNS

No deposit claimed

when sea so heaves against land

and vomits back up the plastic bottles

neither one can stomach.

ATTACHMENT

In the road’s hard dirty gravel

she lunges to rescue

the pure fallen blue

of a robin’s egg.

A wad of poisonously dyed gum

she can’t get off her hands now.

IT'S 500 YEARS AFTER THE REFORMATION

and I STILL have never met

a Catholic guy named Calvin or Luther.

Mary Krane Derr