Publication forthcoming in "Chronogram" -- February 2012

MaryAnn's poem, "Break Room" will appear in the February 2012 issue of Chronogram magazine. It is distributed widely in the Hudson Valley, NY area....and one may subscribe as well....

Check them out online at:

http://www.chronogram.com

Chronogram is the Mid-Hudson magazine of events and ideas, featuring arts, culture and spirit, all year long. Get 12 monthly issues delivered to your door for $60 (US).

314 Wall Street
Kingston, NY 12401

Slipknot

and do not go from me she said,
and do not go from me though
the days tick off quick as a
metronome

she wraps her hands around his
throat, arranging his scarf
until it winds, blue-grey, snaking, below the
slate of his eyes, lash-fringed black

last night she dreamt he
died, and, with him, her heart,
lost like a balloon into the
blank copybook sheet above

the Grand Concourse, dissolved
as in a salt-sea, a bird-speck
against grey and
no one to be called at all

Crockery

those stolid matrons, beef
to the heel, arranging their
crockery, pensive at a
certain sound or the

gold bars of light falling, crossways,
striping the carpet, finally fading
as the car door slams, hollow, and
eyes, onion-stung, survey

the dinner upon that field
of flowers, bluebells here, then
hollyhocks, then poppies bleeding
to the edge of the plate

marked with a pattern-name
and date, twice-fired, vitrified
to withstand the heat and the
damage of cutlery clattering, the

accidental touch in the kitchen, too,
as the moon rises up, a single,
unblinking eye
espying the bones, sucked dry of their marrow,
piled high, scraps and leavings of
another day gone past

Renovations

this heat drains him--she is surprised
to hear him say--yet she has her
own catalogue of ills, those
nights spent sleepless, gazing upon
the bright-numeraled clock, counting the hours until
we dash, again, into the fray, empty-
handed, naked as newborns

the strands of silver, too, brushed at
dawn, the knees that ache upon ascending
a stairwell, migraine tablets grasped
as curtains are drawn tightly together

so time hurries on and we are
not as we were in those
fondly remembered
days and evenings past

one hand scours away while the
other builds up, always laying a
new foundation or a
fresh coat of paint,
addressing the damages done by
time weathering on--he winks at
us and smiles--
he has seen it all before

Arcadian Days

immortal past, unfolded like
the origami from his
pockets, those squares, rectangles,
triangles of white, wordthick,
insulating him from the cold,

his love hanging like a lei
around his neck, between them
the blossoms yellow, sickly sweet,
an old memory pressed
between the sheets

of a volume left in her mailbox, the
note post-dated while
icicle-teeth, jagged, hang down from
the eaves as if to consume her whole,
blood, brain and gristle

three automobiles, tarpshrouded, in
blue, black, tan, flap, flap, in the
sudden breath of wind strained through tree-
limbs, morse code of heat ticking up
from the furnace, a red sky tonight

their arms entwined now, as roots overgrown
thick with moss, velvet green, his gloved
hand in hers, twisting her ring, the circle
broken by stones mined in those
carefully-footnoted arcadian days