Trending »
Related »

THREE POEMS – M. L. Brown

on December 26 | in Poetry | by | with No Comments

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
 
A woman is housing,
is keeping the darks
from the lights, is splitting
 
wings from breasts, dividing
one into knives and spoons,
answering: What’s for dinner?
Have you seen my? Why
is the gas bill so high?
 
A woman
is fragmenting, tectonic plating. A shoe
left on the stair again.
 
She is stealing to a quiet shade,
trying to save some paradise.
 
*
No, she answers, there is no more ice cream—
no lick, no trace.
 


 
ONLY MEAN BONES
 
I’m becoming an open honey comb of bone,
a canted weave, a clutch of shells
eroded by the sea. I’m becoming bone
 
friable as a fender rusted by salt winters.
A pelvis translucent—china cup, too brittle for tea.
Holy relic. My body, its own catacomb.
 
O sieve of hips, may you sing
like Sappho’s broken poems, while I write
in swirls and curves, wear away my wrist bones.
 


 
REQUISITES OF A GOOD LETTER 
 
from Manners for Millions
 
Try until you
find the stroke you like
They vary
 
Sit
with plenty of elbow room
 
Say “ceremony”
you will get more pleasure
 
The first thing is your
 
body
 
(Very truly yours, Yours sincerely, Affectionately yours)
  
 
M. L. Brown is the author of Call It Mist, winner of the 2018 Three Mile Harbor Press Book Prize, and Drought, winner of the Claudia Emerson Chapbook award. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Blackbird, among other journals and anthologies. When not writing, she devotes her time to raising funds for a nonprofit health care organization. She lives in California.

Pin It

Related Posts

« »

Recent Posts

News

THE SACRED GROVE –  [...]

[new_royalslider id="17"] Ana Flores is a sculptor and ecologist. Her work is informed by how pla

Safia Elhilo

2 Poems

Michele Robinson\'s Art [...]

Let Me Straddle Your Mind

X.J. Kennedy

The Crusader

Why did you leave bring m [...]

Yeah bring our electric shaver back, I bought it we shaved each others back it was important to me

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes

BEFORE YOU – Kwame  [...]

1 Yes, we were country, lived in shotgun shacks, where the road loses its way to dirt and live

MENSTRUAL FLOWERS – [...]

[new_royalslider id="11"] Courtesy of the artist and Mizuma Art Gallery  

WHAT THE WOMB ISN’T [...]

         "Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to lea

JUNOT DIAZ

Junot' Diaz and Edison, NJ

EDISON, NEW JERSEY – [...]

The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no on

Rachel Eliza Griffiths [...]

Elegy & Poem

The March on Washington:  [...]

OTHER WORLD: A Conversati [...]

"We are all the other."

I OPEN A BOX

…and find inside a picture, of myself as a child, sitting on a small chair, wearing overalls an

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

CIRCLES OF THE MOON & [...]

To Alex, on turning two Some say the Ring of Brogar is the Circle of the Moon. There is n

In This Issue

March on Washington An Interview with Cheryl Evans

5 POINTZ: GRAFFITI MECCA  [...]

In a strange twist of what seemed like reverse vandalism, the Graffiti Mecca was painted over.

In This Issue

Forest Gander A Translation

In This Issue

Quassan Castro, poem Grandson to Grandmother

URBAN CANVAS: Wynwood Wal [...]

Wynwood Walls, of Miami has been called "a Museum of the Streets."

Pulaski Skyway

Low like the mean dream of Newark the sky must have seemed to its builders. Rickety now, unhingin

THE SPAN & OTHER POE [...]

At last, the extremes of his present methods seemed to offer the happiest avenues. The strengthe

Paul Latorre

5th Limb Poems

Joan Larkin

Poem, Knot

Gina Loring, Def Poetry [...]

Poem, Look This Way

In This Issue

Xue Du, Poem

AT THE END OF THE DREAM I [...]

A woman      in a black kimono      dyed black hair disappeared      behind a black curtai

Marge Piercy

Poem: Behind the War On Women

Naive Paintings

Raphael Perez

Marie Miazziotti -Gillam [...]

Maria Mizzotti-Gillan

Vicky Dantel

Short Story

In This Issue

Pilar Fraile Amador poem

Quassan Castro

Poem

Lugensky Durosier [...]

Lady Haiti

In This Issue

David Trinidad

In This Issue

Landzy Theodore

In This Issue

Angelo Nikolopoulos

Scroll to top