Issue 1, 1986
After Storm
Already the desert sky had packed
its scarves and gone over the hard blue hills
when I awoke, throat
raw from the tail end of a dream
through which your cough and
the smoke of a cigarette sailed. I followed
the deep light of the hallway out
to where the patio roof gaped,
bamboo shades mocking the palm tree
in splintery arpeggios. You stood
flicking ash onto the trampled grass.
I could smell the rain leaving, the sage
enthralled in a bitter virtue for hours.
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While teaching at Arizona State University from 1981–89, Rita Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for her third book of poetry, Thomas and Beulah. From 1993–95 she served as U.S. Poet Laureate. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama—the only poet ever honored with both. Her most recent honors include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2021 Gold Medal in poetry from the American Academy of Arts & Letters—the third woman and first African American in the 110 years of the Academy’s highest honor. She is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Her eleventh collection of poetry, Playlist for the Apocalypse, was published in 2021.