Amanda Auchter is the editor of Pebble Lake Review and
was a finalist in the Atlanta Review 2004
International Poetry Competition.  She is the
recipient of the 2004 Howard Moss Poetry
Prize and won
third prize in the 2003 Writer's Digest Writing
Competition for creative nonfiction.  Her writing has
appeared or is forthcoming in Antietam Review,
Cimarron Review, DIAGRAM, Phoebe, Sulphur River
Literary Review, and elsewhere.  She has just been named poet-in-residence at Spillway Review. 
                       10/28/04


Amanda Auchter
Notes from the Red Couch

                    It's as if it knew

of the eventual parting, how when
you stripped the plant from the desk

it left a circle of dust
with our fingerprints trapped inside.

I know this now, know how eventually
there was an understandable panic,

that when we replaces me, the shift
makes the other seem invisible.

          I am tired of that first person
just as that room tired of

our endless bargains & constructs

the notes from the red couch
that found their way into our voices. 

I touched my lips to ensure
breathing was not optional,

tapped worry into my skin,
anything not to

touch you & shatter.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter





Apology for a Transference
                     for Christopher

Our voices are a light
under our skins.  We infect

each other, glow pink. 

I am what swarms, cheek full
of bees, barbs in my tongue,

your fat, swollen lip.

                                       Breathe
into the puncture, funnel

in the red light of your mouth. 
I spill honey as I wander

through your body, sleep
in the ether of your breath. 

                          Here, I want you
to say.  Live here.  My buzzes return nothing

drunk-dizzy, I wind out, fall into the cup
of your hand.  In this light,

my stings are irrelevant. 

In this light, we harden to wax.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter

While You Were Writing in My Chart

         Your ink falls,
little blue bombs on white paper. 

A burst pen loses itself, swirls
in its own confusion of clear plastic
and stem. 

         I know the fine points
of broken objects

how veins expand when cut,
that even plastic cannot contain
itself beyond its parameters,

that even we are unstable, stirring
in our casks of bone.

         We nod and talk
as if any moment our bodies

will combust, burn down
to the black cinders of our tongues.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter


Amanda Auchter is the editor of Pebble Lake Review and
was a finalist in the Atlanta Review 2004
International Poetry Competition.  She is the
recipient of the 2004 Howard Moss Poetry
Prize and won
third prize in the 2003 Writer's Digest Writing
Competition for creative nonfiction.  Her writing has
appeared or is forthcoming in Antietam Review,
Cimarron Review, DIAGRAM, Phoebe, Sulphur River
Literary Review, and elsewhere.  She has just been named poet-in-residence at Spillway Review. 
                       10/28/04