Back to the Beginning

 Andrea Potos

 

Andrea Potos and college boyfriend Win

Grateful for Win

By Andrea Potos

I was writing as a girl, of course, mostly bad, rhyming poetry.  But I loved it.  Unfortunately, but predictably, I stopped writing when boys took precedence.  However, when I was 20 years old and frustrated again with my boyfriend who had forgotten our plans, I wrote a poem called “I Wait” that was later published in some Midwestern poetry anthology I’ve long forgotten.  I think it was my first good poem actually (also forgotten now). 

 Just this year I wrote a poem called “The First Good Poem” that is actually the title of a new poetry collection I put together! I am forever grateful to my darling college boyfriend Win Starr who prompted that poem. 

Anyway, publishing in earnest didn’t begin until my early 30’s.  In1998, Parallel Press of University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries launched a chapbook series, with my chapbook The Perfect Day as their first book!  From there, I put a manuscript together that explored the legacies of my beloved  grandmother and mother, and my Greek-American roots; Yaya’s Cloth was published by Iris Press in 2007. 

And the rest is poetic history!

Here are three poems from The Perfect Day: (and It is still available, evidently!)

https://www.library.wisc.edu/parallelpress/pp-catalog/poetry-series/pre-2000/the-perfect-day/

THE PERFECT DAY

All my fears have surrendered for now.
There’s a pond of smooth water outside my window;
clouds parade across its surface
like happy animals.
The ground is nearly ready to spill its green.
Rain has scrubbed and rinsed the air of its soot;
I can see my child coming down the road, just in time
for the bread
emerging from my oven–
arcs of amber,
mounds where the spirits live.  


WHERE GRIEF THRIVES

Each morning a fresh ache bursts
into bud,
inside the walled garden where grief thrives.

I am searching for a way in–
through the tangle of brush that masks
the opening,
for some chink in the old brick,
or the rust-pocked key
that belonged to my grandmother.

I want to touch the bowed
blooms that must live there.
I want to cup my hands under
the fountain’s water–a stream so steady
in its fall, it can carve out
a hollow in stone.  

THE WELL

The surface is marred
with a scatter of last autumn’s
forgotten leaves,
the limp remains of insects,
their drowned iridescence.

You must bend yourself slowly
to see over the edge,
let the long rope unravel
from the tight spool of your heart.
Like seams gently torn open,
let your hands part the dark water.  

Two poems from Yaya’s Cloth:

ORIGINS

Yaya upwraps the cup
I gave her, it’s handle molded
ito an angel.
She claps her hand like a happy child,
traces the glistening
arcs of its wings
and holds it to her cheek.
Eenay poli ohreho she cries,
the original words
I cannot translate alone--
they spill through her speech

more and more now, 
as if she is letting slip
that knot of English,
leaving the dock where she arrived
seventy years ago    streaming back
to that girl in Piraeus,
port of her childhood
where I cannot go,
blue water of her birth.


GOSSIP

     She enjoyed it as much as cooking or eating.  It was an important part of living.---
                                                               Marie Giordano

Didn’t the grandmothers convene
at their kitchen tables, fingers patting

floral oilcloths as they sipped
their percolated coffee swirling

with crumbs of toast and cake,
as they spoke

of what could not be contained:
the news, like love, that must be shared,

the hunger and loneliness at the root
quelled,

the confirming replies:
Ah, ah. 

More poems from Andrea:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2025/01/storyteller-of-week_7.html