Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

Our poem this week comes from Tiffany De Vos of Brooklyn, NY. Tiffany told us that it's rare to find space and care devoted to poetry in a print newspaper and she thanked us for it. She enjoyed reading Christine Potter's poem in a recent issue.

Tiffany has Irish heritage from her mother's side of the family, and she recently experienced her first trip to Dublin, Cork, Blarney, Waterford, and a few other choice locations.

She has had poems published in many literary magazines such as "Washington Square", "Yuan Yang" - A Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing. "Pebble Lake Review", "Global City Review", "Dark Sky Magazine", "Alimentum", "The Saint Ann's Review", "Ars Medica", "The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette", and "HOBART".

She received an MFA in 2004 from New York University and a Hopwood Award in 1999 from the University of Michigan, and has taught at the University of Michigan and New York University. She currently works as a high-school teacher in the New York City public school system and serves as an assistant editor at the literary journal "Many Mountains Moving".

Thank you for your motovating three dimentional poem Tiffany, you certainly invigourated a few dormant brain cells in this rusty head.Your poem paints a picture that is bigger than the words you use, it is a reminder to us all what the essence of good poetry is all about. Thank you Tiffany!

The Archives

We keep castings of you,
catalogued, tagged;
displays of shopping, drinking, love,
and your voices spooling on tape-
directions, oaths, a lover, accusing,
and you, pleading off.

We have your rocks and stamps,
everything you collected;
even your dogs bark in the dioramas
where we can induce any episode
and it will not change.

One of you slaps another,
and makes the same print,
no more aware each time
of the glass around you,
the small colonies where we isolate you,
studying the senses you seem to have:
your music, scratchy from dubbing,
the images you saw, stained
on slides, ordinal.

© Tiffany De Vos