My Blunder

by Amy Pence


The dragonfly throbs
its gilded thorax.
Brevity: one excuse.

My cup leaves a ring
on the news: “two-year-old
swallows crack, dies.”

There is no idle remnant.
The evening stippled
with signs. Her name

was Diamond. What else
denied? What else
left unhealed?




Amy Pence’s chapbook, Skin’s Dark Night, was published by 2River Press in 2003. Her manuscript “Ablaze” has been a finalist and semi-finalist for several poetry competitions. Current poems are online at The Pedestal Magazine and Mudlark and in print in Runes and Red Rock Review. She lives near Atlanta with her daughter and husband.