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                           _________________________________

Nancy A. Henry

Nancy A. Henry’s poems have appeared or are upcoming  in Animus, Southern Humanities Review, Pedestal, Poetrybay, Three Candles, Poetry International, The Hollins Critic, Spoon River Poetry Review, and over 200 other publications in the US, UK and AU.  An Associate Editor of The Café Review, she also teaches English composition and literature at Southern Maine Community College. Nancy was a co-editor of the Maine poetry anthology A Sense of Place. Her chapbooks Anything Can Happen and Hard were published by MuscleHead Press. Nancy has received a Pushcart Prize nomination as well as an Atlanta Review International Merit Award.

Here is her entrance,
lined with rich carnation
silk, heart columbine. 
This medicine
has drugged her,
reduced her mind
to that of a snail.
A snail can sleep
for three years,
etch a fossilized silver trail
of frozen tears.
She tastes his
milk on her tongue.
Oh love,
be sweet as violets,
or vile as blood-lily
while her legs
tremble under her,
whisper—love, tremble
not, tremble
not—sleep again.