Francine Marie Tolf
has had work in many journals, including Southern Humanities Review, Nimrod, New Letters, Harpur Palate, Spoon River, and 5AM.
She is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. Her chapbook, Blue-flowered Sundress (Pudding House Press), was recently published.
Francine worked for many years as a legal secretary in Chicago before returning to school for a Master’s in English. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Birthday Gift
A poet told me I must
see more than sky
when I look at sky.
But after years
of walking this city’s
lakefront,
I noticed only
today, in thin rain,
how perfectly
a white and gray gull
tucked his feet under
each opening wing
as he lifted himself
from rock
to join mist.
I took that gift
exactly as it was,
I carried it home.
Sex
Who doesn’t come to it
damaged in some way?—
needing the other to understand,
through dumb touch,
all that is unsayable?
Two bodies pleasing each other,
a writer once described it,
as if one could
slide down experience
into a toddler’s playground:
as if its pleasures
came that easily to those
who turn away from cool streams
to reach, with charred hands,
for branches of flame.
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