Patience is the progress
around the flower dial,
the sun’s wand-tap on every head
to wake each fairy child.

Patience is a pacing
in outdoor starless rooms,
a preening of the cold black grass,
the hour nothing blooms.

by Monika Cooper

Original bio from the May/June 2006 edition:

Monika Cooper is a notoriously heterodox and dangerous influence on America’s youth. She can take the form of a tiger or of a seemingly harmless brandy-like liquid that is subsequently untraceable.

This poem originally ran in the May/June 2006 edition of Grub Street Grackle. It appears here online for the first time.