Verseful Maniza Pritila

Lake Gatun (Verseful 15)
-Shyanne Figueroa Bennett



Glimmering membrane of water

split when she enters. Sinks

to clay floor. Sand. Shell.

sedimenting to form

a woman   dark

as lake floor. Dark

as they created. In debris



of dynamic heads. Silver men

glisten unsewn and woven

into her being broken,

hollowed to carry

remnants of souls strewn

in man-made waters.



What can be made from nothing?

The question hooks to her neck.

Her curl hair gills for breath.

Iridescent scales shed

from slender sinewy form

as her intricate jawbones

mechanize for an open

-- unprecedented speech



for she who was carved

out of isthmus

intended for silence.

Nothing much. Just wishing that you have a happy new year :).

A New Dress 
by Ruth Dallas


I don’t want a new dress, I said.

My mother plucked from her mouth ninety-nine pins.

I suppose there are plenty, she said, girls of ten

Who would be glad to have a new dress.



Snip-snip. Snip-snip. The cold scissors

Ate quickly as white rabbit round my arm.



She won’t speak to me if I have a new dress!

My feet rattled on the kitchen floor.



How can I fit you if you won’t stand still?



My tears made a map of Australia

On the sofa cushion; from the hot center

My friend’s eyes flashed, fierce as embers.

She would not speak to me, perhaps never again.

She would paralyze me with one piercing look.



I’d rather have my friend than a new dress!



My mother wouldn’t understand, my grownup mother

Whose grasshopper thimble winked at the sun

And whose laughter was made by small waves

Rearranging seashells on Australia’s shore.

A Night in a World

Heather McHugh



I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t stay home

where the big dipper rises from, time

and again: one mountain ash.



And I wouldn’t have thought without traveling out

how huge that dipper was,

how small that tree.

Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem

Mathew Olzmann



Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage

might work: Because you wear pink but write poems

about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell

at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,

loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,

gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials

from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.

You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents

of what you packed were written inside the boxes.

Because you think swans are overrated.

Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me

to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.

Because you underline everything you read, and circle

the things you think are important, and put stars next

to the things you think I should think are important,

and write notes in the margins about all the people

you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.

Because you make that pork recipe you found

in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read

that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing

except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self

and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights

are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed

over the windows, you still believe someone outside

can see you. And one day five summers ago,

when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge

was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—

there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,

which you paid for with your last damn dime

because you once overheard me say that I liked it.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott



The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,



and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you



all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,



the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.