DC Poets: Judith McCombs

Couplets, Temporal 

Two is one

and one are two.

One is me, 

the other’s you.

Who dines best

on what I chew?

Queasy me 

or lazy you?

Who’s more tickled

when I screw?

Surface me 

or lurking you?

Who got odd-tempered

as you grew?

Ballooning me

or cruising you?

In the next three months

can I sleep through?

With a bladder squeezed

by trapeze you?

I store your milk,

digest for two.

Present’s me,

future’s you.

Judith McCombs has poems in Calyx, Measure, Delmarva Review, Nimrod (Neruda Award), Poet Lore, Poetry,  Potomac Review (Poetry Prize), Prairie Schooner; on line in Innisfree, MIPOESIA, Poet and the Poem (Library of Congress), Shenandoah (2012 Gowen-Graybeal  Poetry Prize); and her fifth book, The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New. She’s held NEH and Canadian Senior Fellowships, and in 2009 won Maryland State Arts Council’s highest Individual Artist Award. She arranges a poetry series at Kensington Row Bookshop in Kensington, MD, copyedits for Word Works, and has taught at Wayne State University, Detroit’s BFA Center for Creative Arts, and the Bethesda Writer's Center.