Connie Wanek has written several poetry collections, including Rival Gardens, On Speaking Terms, and Bonfire. As an editor of the anthology To Sing along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, she received several awards. In 2006 Poet Laureate Ted Kooser named her Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Wanek lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

Artificial Tears

by Connie Wanek

Tears sometimes come in a bottle.
Twist it open and apply drops
several times daily
if you haven’t enough of your own,
if you’ve begun to see light

where there is none,
on a humid night in the country,
black and brooding. Nothing.
And then a lightning strike.
People on couch
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