Poetry Friday: Take a (line) break

In honor of National Poetry Month, The Thread is introducing Poetry Fridays. Each Friday in April, we will publish a selection of poetry from local independent publishing houses Graywolf Press, Coffee House Press and Milkweed Editions.

Mule Trail

Gretchen Marquette

Stirring the fire's coals with a stick—a familiar sound
I couldn't place until I shut my eyes—
the sound of walking through snow.

Each morning now, I wake thinking of him

because all night I hold on—like at the motel

 when I slept curled around him, back against the headboard,

my hands in his gold hair. I'm trying to find a place to rest,
but loving him is like flying, like being starlings,

knowing when to move and how. It's nothing

like migration; no safe landings in brackish,

green estuaries. Still, there's the way the match hisses
when I touch its head to the glass of water.

There's the way he loves me. There's the way

the sun can heat the juice inside a berry

to the temperature of blood, and how good he is

at loving me. Something is building inside.

Pearls make me think of fevers. Blood oranges,
finches, the stick of a fish's silver skin to its flesh—

what do you do, when you realize you want
the whole of everything inside of you?

I don't want to tell what I've learned—

there's no way to repel love or to draw it close.
I don't want to say I'm bewildered, but

what makes a man love a woman?

I know the way he loves is not for spectacle. I know

this will not last. Before the end we'll drive to the desert
to see it bloom, to see vacant motels and red-gold buttes,

see the desert's blue stars and the collapsing
castles of its abandoned mini-golf courses,
the dark signs of its empty diners.

For now we have Mule Trail, where everything
looks like something else. The firewood in the pit,
lit from inside like a church's stained-glass window,

the plum's gold flesh laced with scarlet veins,
replica of a human brain. Maybe this is all we are—
carbon, water, color. We spent the storm in the tent,

woke up later and rebuilt the fire, heard coyotes'
eerie chatter, then the wolves'—lower and wiser,
with authority. Why am I so ungainly with love

after all the loving I've done? I didn't realize

until I was hours away—the insect bites, the pin-sized
blisters of stinging nettle, the raw interior skin.

What does it mean to be in love? As it turns out,
the second best thing that can happen to you

is a broken heart.

"Mule Trail," copyright © 2016 by Gretchen Marquette. Reprinted from "May Day" with the permission of Graywolf Press.

Pie

Karen Leona Anderson

If not by date, by book, by recipe,
then by pie, tattooed, cherry-lush
in the shattering crust I know by hand,

by heart—the garnet gone silk through slits,
the rolled-down skin over salt, rolled down
again, the press of the thumb as it rips

and drapes, undress arrested,
now lifted by heat to the light,
on which you could read,

now vellum, now welling with red,
the kiss of the needle, which if
you missed in your hurry, I guess

now cool, you'll see through slicks
and sheers of juice the sign I pieced
from crust through red, through cover,

through sugar, your name,
you stitched to it.

"Pie," copyright © 2016 by Karen Leona Anderson. Reprinted from "Receipt" with the permission of Milkweed Editions.

Peanut Pond

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Under poplars, maples
between turtles, black bass,
beauty between       pollen
skimmed       waters,
Canadians,        two pair,        lead
at least twenty-four goslings,
creep in from human worry
nearer peeper lives.
Heron swoop dailies,
kerosene-lighted nights.
Sometimes duty fails academic.
Poetry, practice of everything else:
paddled waters, lilies, samaras,
pine needled, caned sprigs,
some sweet vine
wraps hollow maple
flowering while I pen
over your writing
in the base of this canoe.
Mooring for a moment
over waterworlds below.
Only shift,        paddle dip.
To still, straighten.

"Peanut Pond," copyright © 2016 by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. Reprinted from "Streaming" with the permission of Coffee House Press.