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Sugar Dada

By J. Allyn Rosser b. 1957

Go home. It's never what you think it is,

The kiss, the diamond, the slamdance pulse in the wrist.

Nothing is true, my dear, not even this

Rumor of passion you'll doubtless insist

On perceiving in my glance. Please just

Go. Home is never what you think it is.

Meaning lies in meaning's absence. The mist

Is always almost just about to lift.

Nothing is truer. Dear, not even this

Candle can explain its searing twist

Of flame mounted on cool amethyst.

Go on home—not where you think it is,

But where you would expect its comfort least,

In still-black stars our century will miss

Seeing. Nothingness is not as true as this

Faith we grind up with denial: grist

To the midnight mill; morning's catalyst.

Come, let's go home, wherever you think it is.

Nothing is true, my dear. Not even this.

Source: Poetry (February 2001).

Biography

J. Allyn Rosser was born in Pennsylvania and attended Middlebury College in Vermont as well as the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a doctorate. Her works include Bright Moves (1990), which won the Morse Poetry Prize, and Misery Prefigured (2001), winner of the Crab Orchard Award. In 2007 she was awarded The New Criterion Poetry Prize for a new book of poems entitled Foiled Again, published in the Fall of 2007. . . .

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