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a barometer over a piano warns dust collects among bric-a-brac
the heart longs for Mozart on days when there is no chance of
rain or Flaubert scratching his pen on unlined paper asking
is Mozart better in spring a hundred and sixty-three pages later
Madame Bovary slams the front door the barometer
shatters love letters scatter like geese squabbling over
crumbs left on the side of the road by the old woman who snorts
thistle before Flaubert finishes his soup of ox-tails and onions
—JoAnna Scandiffio
JoAnna Scandiffio is a poet and a gemologist living in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Poets 11 2016, Masque & Spectacle, Necessity is a Mother, Switched-on Gutenberg, and Sugared Water.
Copyright 2017, JoAnna Scandiffio