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Poetry. Paper, perfect bound, 30 pp
2003, Mayapple Press

Repose

For those on earth can much advance us here.-- Dante

Catholics have it all wrong: Purgatory
is not in the afterlife. It is the aisle in a grocery store
where your husband ignores you, the bed covers
you lie beneath alone. Never knowing if he will ask you
to leave this place. It is not the dead
in need of prayers; the living are the punished.
Trapped in a car with someone
they can’t ask to stop, a person who never speaks
sitting across the table from them.
It is easy to see why they linger
near others of their kind. Seeking release
they want to be whole again and remember
what it was like to reside in the world unfettered,
without thirty pieces of silver lining
their pockets.

"The poem as a form of prayer is one of poetry's earliest traditions, and in Coming Clean, Adrienne lewis has written a collection of prayers that, although looking toward the sacred, never turns its back on the profane, on the gloriously human.  These are strong lyric poems, an impressive debut." -- Gerry LaFemina, Author of Zarathustra in Love and Print of Wildflowers

"I found these poems touching and powerful. Like the books's astute title, they combine informal language, humor and earthiness with a serious and edgy feminist and spiritual perspective.  Adrienne writes perceptively about both childhood and adult dangers, about fears and longings, about sinning and finding grace.  She does not flinch while looking at the sadness of everyday life, nor is she overcome by it.  Her words stay with me long after I read them." -- Larry Levy, Author of I Would Stay Forever If I Could

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