J. Allyn Rosser

J. Allyn Rosser (1957- ) was born in Pennsylvania. She attended Middlebury College in Vermont and earned a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. She has received awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ohio State Arts Council. Rosser is a professor of English at Ohio University, where she served as the editor of the New Ohio Review for eight years.

Then Too There is This

joy in the day's being done, however

clumsily, and in the ticked-off lists,   

the packages nestling together,   

no one home waiting for dinner, for   

you, no one impatient for your touch   

or kind words to salve what nightly   

rises like heartburn, the ghost-lump feeling   

that one is really as alone as one had feared.   

One isn't, not really. Not really. Joy   

to see over the strip mall darkening   

right on schedule a neon-proof pink   

sunset flaring like the roof of a cat's mouth,   

cleanly ribbed, the clouds laddering up   

and lit as if by a match struck somewhere   

in the throat much deeper down.

— J. Allyn Rosser