81Jul 31, 2017
My mother grows delphinium, foxglove, zinnia, plucks the dew laden morning. With a storm of petals, she anoints my waking in a chaos of tenderness. My father shows me winter’s stark branches, its naked sky, washes my eyes in the deep blue of dusk. Fullness, woven by light, intoxicated by color, reels with […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 82Jul 31, 2017
Nothing stays at rest molecules of a crystal—table salt snowflakes, diamonds, quartz—repeat their patterns in tight formation like a platoon at inspection faces still as glass but young and like glass, not organized a state between two states neither liquid nor solid only light slips through the empty spaces glass shows true or changes light’s […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 83Jul 31, 2017
On the weekends the boys would take their bikes into the desert carrying wicker baskets and sharpened sticks in search of rattlesnakes. When they’d find one beneath a rock or behind a bush the youngest would gig it on the end of his makeshift spear, not with any primal, Spartan war cry but with a […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 84Jul 31, 2017
The obituary talks of his smile. I imagine it breaking through his face like a thunderhead, frantic like a hunted bird. Imagine it breaking into a room it was not invited. Frantic, like a hunted bird remembers who sent the buckshot into a room it was not invited. This morning I learn he remembered to […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 85Jul 31, 2017
Fire blight has touched the pear, and the bright leaves And rounding fruit crumble to ashes despite the sun, The showers, the desire to be and be more; Shepherd’s Crook has withered the branches to a spasm That pulls the tree earthward and breaks it to its grave, Though the tree is stretching the sky […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 86Jul 31, 2017
put on Atom Heart Mother and guide him to sit on the edge of the bed with lit candles on the headboard and talk about your Carolines and Rosemaries before he would ask you to watch his skinny rib abductor muscles ripple while he reaction-screamed like a dinosaur and grab his hips with resolution to […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 87Jul 31, 2017
says I’m divine like a banana split he can’t say no to. When he calls my name he shouts pomegranate and fake orgasms, honeybees and dandelion pollen. I ask him if he knows I do my makeup in the reflection of the TV, or that I once moved to New York to lose fifteen […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 88Jul 31, 2017
I wait for you while the sun seeps out of tea bags in backdrop of overnight porcelain retrieved from cold memories. On cobblestones, patterned iron dazzles white. They sit with prim backs like austere monks in deep contemplation of laced tablecloths switched out of yesterday’s stains. I wait for myself as much to arrive as […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 89Jul 31, 2017
Whiplashings of sun run down arms that squeeze necks as if to say: the hot floods my air filters when you whisper ignorant things; I whisper them but your mind is elsewhere. I can tell by the way the windshield sizzles like scorched slate as a troop of surfers hit the beach and the wave […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017. 90Jul 31, 2017
You and I, at opposite ends of the universe, perform our unusual dance, you, spinning clockwise to the delight of the audience, and I, in opposing rotation, clapping my hands to the rhythm that sustains us. Your sudden collapse becomes my death, my spin thrown akilter, my charge reduced to zero. Angelo Giambra’s poetry has […]
Written by: marathonlitreview on July 31, 2017.