"Bronzed Monarch" by Merri Pattinian

Sunday in October. I've decided to leave my husband.
My mother, knowing nothing of my plan, has decided to
take us to a Renaissance festival in her car.
Like a dutiful daughter, I've told her I'm happily
married, assured her he only insults me
when he's around her. He sits in the back, I, in the front,
where I have far too good a view of the monarch migration.
They struggle south, reaching for warmth, while
we drive directly into their flight, haplessly crushing
hundreds of fragile bodies against our windshield.
Before there is time to see design in the black and orange,
their papery forms have dissolved against glass.
I want to scream to stop the car, sure if I don't do something,
some inner force will fling me toward them.
He's threatened to kill me if I ever left him,
said no one else would want me,
found my body good for spending only,
my words no more than stops and starts of breath
against the hard wall of the world.
From where I sit, rebirth and death look the same.
Weighing my options, I fly.

BIO: Donna Potts is an associate professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where she teaches Irish literature, African literature, poetry, Old English and the History of the English Language. Though she has spent a lot of time writing about poetry (a book on Howard Nemerov, articles on Nuala Ni Dhomhaill, Seamus Heaney, and others), while in Ireland on sabbatical this year, she had more time to spend on her own poetry, which was included in two exhibits held at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Kevin Higgins (Galway poet whose book was recently published by Salmon Press) also organized a reading for her. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Digest, Kansas City Star Magazine, Exposed, and Document. Email: dlpotts@ksu.edu