Pandora’s Gift – by Anca Vlasopolos

surprised
as children   by each snowfall   each spring
we run collecting chestnuts as if this one autumn will not come again

now we’ve been round our ellipse for o so many years
each revolution speeding
we look up   already time to hang up a new calendar

without our prompt
children could wait till christmas   halloween
this game   this frog   this petal   all there is for all time

though which of us hasn’t been kicked hard in the teeth
slapped silly   rent by grief that then feeds on our innards
our foolish hearts still think   we’ll see another swoop of swallows over water


Anca Vlasopolos published the award-winning novel The New Bedford Samurai; the award-winning memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement; four collections of poems, Often Fanged Light (Adelaide Books, 2019), Cartographies of Scale (and Wing) (2015); Walking Toward Solstice (2012); and Penguins in a Warming World (2007); three poetry chapbooks, a detective novel, Missing Members, and nearly three hundred poems and short stories in literary journals.

Art: out of the box thinking, acrylic paint and marker on 14×11 inch canvas, 2018
Artist Statement: I enjoy the way this pairing modernizes the age-old story of Pandora’s box.