The fear that all this will end. The fear that it won't.

Lily Brown writes with and against things in poems that are coiled up tight as springs (or snakes). A believer in the power of the line, she writes, 'I think the plastics/and sink them' then 'Where is the sand/man hiding the dirt.' These terse, biting poems will make you look around and wonder.

The crowd is made of little gods, and there is still no heaven.

But here I hold your dream in my poem.

I know you by your willingness.

Like all my poems, 'Negotiations' has several sources. It deals with aging lovers and the often silent deals they make. Thinking about bargains made me think of The Little Mermaid and that made me remember something I had just read about the incredibly complex process by which tadpoles (actual little mermaids) are somehow able to reabsorb their tails and fashion their future frog legs.

Poetry wants to make things mean more than they mean, says someone, as if we knew how much things meant, and in what unit of measure.