Poetry

Now I Know Myself

by

Stacy Lynn Mar

That summer autumn groaned for return,
Leaves in the trees turning orange in their skin,
I watched them out the eye of my window
And wished I could outgrow myself into a new disguise.

It was the time of ever-changing isolation,
The time of teenage boredom, the time of nothingness
Not unlike pages blowing upon a bitter winter wind,
Only it wasn’t winter and for him my heart grew warm.

Sixteen times like a vandal, like something scarlet
I stole away with him to secret places, memories unmarked,
I peeled away my shell, like an egg or a snake, or a rebirthing
And in the end, like a river, he swam away.

I lost myself behind the barricade of books,
Their pages dog eared and bristling to my virgin fingers,
My eyes a sponge of my minds mediator,
Within the stories and lines and words I found my truth.

Like the Spring spun her golden web into my horizon,
Summer finds me again unveiling, not innocence this time
But a sense of sincere sophistication, the reflection of a woman
A flower bloomed from the depths of the dead, now I know myself.

Letter of Resignation

by

Stacy Lynn Mar

I like the idea of a divorce.
Today I sit on my high-backed
Discount-priced, maroon-speckled
Avalanche of a couch
And await the morning mail,
My sealed letter of resignation.
I like the idea of aloneness.

While Nancy Grace explains
The unexplained, I leave her to the meddling.
I like my kitchen a whole lot more now too,
No left-over messes of his Chinese cuisine,
No rice left to scrap, no grime, just me
Lifting the rim of the coffee pot, searching
For the gift in another glass of tea.

All my life, it seems, has been a burning bridge.
First when I was five and the door hinges
Shut my dad out like a fat village villain.
Then at seven, eight, nine, when one by one
My family began to drop like victims of war crime,
Their lives crusting into the shells of decomposition,
Hands crossed, closed eyes turned skywards in mortality.

I was a curious child, creative in my skinny feet.
Grotesquely collecting dead bugs and clover leaves,
Vainly twirling the lid of an old jarring can,
Awaiting the humming bees at the rose trees.
Back then I’d scour the neighborhood
For a kid who understood
what the name Dickenson could mean.

Summer in the country found me amidst
The butterfly dusk of type-written meaning.
Leather-bound books calling
From me in the den, crisp-ironed sheets beckoning
My lay for a good read,
Leaves of Grass and my beginning creativity.
In those becoming days of young womanhood,
Aloneness found me, she sat alongside
Me in the grass, journal propped against my knees,
Words of my poetry-forefathers awe-inspiring.