When winter mornings stay darker
longer and the avenues
are still empty. Where the traffic lights
dangle like emeralds and rubies
for someone who squints.
When the pockets of morning sky
arrive like sapphires
you couldn’t possibly carry.
The day is coming
when your superstitions will spit
in your face and laugh.
Like today
when you’ll stop asking:
How many more days?
Arthur Solway’s poetry and essays have appeared in The Antioch Review, Barrow Street, BOMB, The London Magazine, Salmagundi, Southern Poetry Review, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He was cited among the 2018 finalists for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize, finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award in 2019, and the 2020 finalist for Anhinga Press-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, his critical reviews, profiles, and cultural essays have also been featured in Artforum, Frieze, and Art Asia Pacific magazines. Winner of the 2019 Tupelo Press Third Annual Broadside Competition, he presently lives in Santa Cruz, California.
