L. J. Atkinson

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Roses

New, damp roses grow
outside the door I imagine.

Furled tight like pink tissues,
they smell so crystalline.

Cool, small drops
on your face.

My garden shears are
a pen,

0.3mm XtraFine,
thorn.

L. J. Atkinson is a graduate of the San Francisco State University MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry), where she has also taught undergraduate creative writing. As an undergraduate, she was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Literary Arts, Visual Art and History. She has participated in poetic residencies at the UCROSS Foundation and Community of Writers at Olympic Valley, and received grants from Left Margin LIT and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her work can be found in The Nature of Our Times, Literary Veganism, Haikuniverse, The Round, After the Pause, and other publications.