Jeffrey Croteau's forthcoming chapbook, Oranges, is being published by Penhallow Press. His work has most recently appeared in The Paris Review and Fence. Born and raised in New Hampshire, he spent ten years living in New York City before relocating to Cambridge last year. A poem from Oranges appears below.
After Frost Nights
for Laura
Flocks of robins, each orange
chest blazing like a furnace,
huddle darkly in groves grown quiet
and warmed this winter morning.
A black fog palls the town,
the smudge pots' night-smoke snuffed--
fires that farmers lit to keep
the ember fruits from freezing.
And those who stoked the groves
all night return: sleepless children,
dark and small as sweeps,
now nod their heads in breakfast plates
of toast with summer jams.
Long dawns, day-long dawns,
from which lovers do not rise for work:
windows shut firm, thermostats up,
e'll stay in bed today.
While on the street headlights cortege
the neighbors to work
and the streetlights burn all day.
--Jeffrey Croteau
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