Indulge in poems by Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Devon Miller-Duggan, Alice B. Fogel, Mary Moore, Tim Miller, Kelly Lenox, Kathryn Merwin, Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena, Katie Riley, Gail DiMaggio, Diana Gordon, Suzanne Langlois, Eve Linn, Elizabeth Paul, and Avery M. Guess. New book reviews of A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent, by Gregory Mahrer (reviewed by Gwynn O’Gara) and Illusion of an Overwhelm by Jon Amen, (reviewed by Erica Goss).
Tag Archives: Mary Moore
To the Miscarried Child, Van Gogh’s “Irises” At Arles
by Mary Moore
The irises aren’t eyed, but tongued:
the three bearded sepals
droop, pant, loll among
the splayed jade-green blades,
while behind the jumble
of tilted flowers, a bud
like a bird’s head
with two white eye spots
eyes us, hybrid,
half plant, half animal,
like the foam-formed
almost human shapes we imagine
in Turner’s turbulent seas:
Poseidon, or something stymied,
unable quite to be,
like you, like me,
mon soeur, ma semblable?
Aping the brush’s flame
shape, a few buds even fuse
art and artist.
The one white iris
like a blind eye
tugs us into its cup, a boast,
an outlier, among the blues,
Made of all colors, white
looks like absence,
not plenitude to our dim sight.
And you, dear jilted ghost
of almost, veined iris-blue
in the dark womb water,
still porous, a skein
of eyelets and mouths,
gone before you’d grown
the skin of being human:
if you’d had the luck
to be born,
would Vincent’s irises
have awed you too?
The terrors his brush disclosed,
bad gods among the beauties.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 19, Issue 3.
Mary B. Moore’s books include the full-length Flicker, winner of the 2016 Dogfish Head award, and Eating the Light, winner of Sable Books’ 2016 chapbook award. Cleveland U. published The Book Of Snow (1998). Amanda and the Man Soul (winner of EMRYS chapbook prize) is forthcoming in late 2017.
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In the Dress Of Mirrors
by Mary Moore
The window enters Amanda through her eyes,
the same window that changes the leaves
each day, where finches flit like thoughts
tousling her hair, rustling in the eaves
of her. This may involve a new grammar:
the vertigo at the top of the stairs lolls
in her calves; hello and farewell stammer
on her tongue; and the urge to walk out
of the room, the life, itches at her heels
like wing buds. You want to enter the thoughts
and rooms of her now like the flexions
of leaf light at the glass, the rising notes
of questions. But she’s opaque as a dress
of quicksilver and will not let you look in.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 19, Issue 1.
Mary B. Moore’s books include the full-length Flicker, winner of the 2016 Dogfish Head award, and Eating the Light, winner of Sable Books’ 2016 chapbook award. Cleveland U. published The Book Of Snow (1998). Amanda and the Man Soul (winner of EMRYS chapbook prize) is forthcoming in late 2017.
See all items about Mary Moore