\u00a0my pants with the elastic belly panel.<\/strong><\/p>\n The only music in the empty house<\/strong><\/p>\n strains from a distant country western channel.<\/strong><\/p>\n My breasts are weeping. I\u2019ve been given leave \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n a week in which to heal and convalesce.<\/strong><\/p>\n I peel away the ceiling stars; unweave<\/strong><\/p>\n the year I\u2019d entered on your christening dress.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0I rearrange my premises \u2013 perverse<\/strong><\/p>\n assumptions! \u2013 gather unripe figs; throw out<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0the bloodied bedclothes; scour the universe<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0in search of you. And God. And go about<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0my business as my crooked smile displays<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0the artful look of ordinary days.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n Catherine Chandler (1950 \u2015 ), an American-born Canadian poet, teacher and translator and graduate of McGill University, is winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award 2010, and nominee for six Pushcart Prizes, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2013 Poets\u2019 Prize. She is the author of five books of poetry, the latest, Glad and Sorry Seasons, forthcoming from Biblioasis Press. Her poems, translations, essays, reviews, interviews and podcasts have been widely published in print and online books, journals and anthologies, including The Alabama Literary Review, Orbis, Quadrant, Iambs and Trochees, Measure, Able Muse, Raintown Review, Sonnetto Poesia and The Centrifugal Eye. Catherine writes sonnets because it is her way of trying, as she writes in her sonnet \u201cSonnet Love\u201d, \u201cto modulate unmanageable grief\u201d. Her website, The Wonderful Boat, welcomes visitors at cathychandler.blogspot.com<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cComing to Terms\u201d by Catherine Chandler, is the winner of the 2010 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. It now appears in The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Ph\u00e9nix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au d\u00e9but du troisi\u00e8me mill\u00e9naire. <\/strong><\/p>\n Some 300 sonnets and ghazals in English, French, Spanish,German and Farsi\u2015publish at Friesen Press. Canada 2014. ISBN: Hard-cover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3. Available at Amazon & Barnes & Noble \u00a0<\/a><\/a>We urge readers of these sonnets in Poetry Life & Times\u00a0 from The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Ph\u00e9nix renaissant deses cendes to visit the site <\/strong>http:\/\/vallance22.hpage.com\/<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Catherine](\"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Catherine-Chandler.jpg\")
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