FLATIRONS

From anywhere in the city so close
look up and there they are,
intimate, as if you could press
against the chalky slabs,
red-brown rising from crush of pines:
Flatirons. 

No mystery to the name: heavy triangles of iron
that used to smother wrinkles out of clothes.
They imprint, so one might reasonably pine
for them after even a few short hours.
Sheared-off slabs
grow smaller in the rearview as you press on.

Flatirons press
Slabs tower
close pines

KATYDIDS & CICADAS

When did they stop?
More rain, afterward a cool wind.
I did not notice when they went.
Evenings by the firepit,
crickets scrape their wings in time
to changing air.

Alison Hick’s work has appeared in Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Permafrost, Poet Lore, and other journals. Her poem “Color” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern. Her books include two full-length collections of poems, You Who Took the Boat Out (Unsolicited Press, 2017) and Kiss (PS Books, 2011), a chapbook, Falling Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2006), and a novella, Love: A Story of Images (AWA Press, 2004), a finalist in the 1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition. Awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships. She is a founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

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