Lois Roma-Deeley
Emily Dickinson Travels Between Two Points in Time
I am the also of your life,
the farthest town on the
discolored map, the point to which
you always turn, in love
with distance. I know the signs
of place—here I stand on that which was once
a nothing bit of road, too thin
even to hold the dust
against my shoes—but this mirage,
you want me to be
is like desert thunder
which too soon expands like water
in a lake of air! So just
as it may seem to you unwise
for me to ever talk of us,
I’ll count the days of when and since
your desire became too much.
About the writer:
Lois Roma-Deeley’s most recent full-length book of poetry is The Short List of Certainties, winner of the Jacopone da Todi Book Prize (Franciscan University Press, 2017). She is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Rules of Hunger, northsight, and High Notes—a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Roma-Deeley’s poems have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, nationally and internationally including , Spillway, North Dakota Quarterly, Juked, The Hamilton Stone Review, Columbia Poetry and many more. Currently, Roma-Deeley is Associate Editor of the poetry journal Presence. She has taught creative writing at the graduate, undergraduate students and community levels for many years. Roma-Deeley was named U.S. Professor of the Year, Community College, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE in 2012-2013, is the recipient of a 2016 Arizona Commission on the Arts Grant as well as a four-time recipient of a Ragdale Foundation Residency Fellowship. She is professor emerita at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, where she founded the creative writing and women studies programs. Roma-Deeley is a member of the Two-Year College Caucus of AWP.
Image: Girl with Picture (Fado Girl) by Kateryna Bortsova. Linocut. 40 x 30 cm. 2012. By permission.
