Girl In Chair by Mary Biddinger

 

My newest poet-crush is Mary Biddinger.  I say this often, but it's always a great day when you discover an amazing new poet.  Support poets!  Buy Poetry! 

 

Also, check out her blog: Wordcage.

 

This is one of my favorite poems from this book.  I had a really hard time choosing just one poem to post because they're all superb.  This is my favorite because I love the imagery:

 

Girl In Chair

By Mary Biddinger

 

The streets sew themselves

a beaded mat you can buy

every night.  Catfish in bed

with the rushes.  Everything

sleeping deep together.

 

Needlepoint is half blood

most of the time.  You miss

once, twice, by the window.

How else to stitch flowers,

or the red mailbox waiting

for a postman’s blue vest.

 

All a game of in and out.

Blood waiting to dump

its oxygen, the mosquito

and waxwing, storm fronts

quaking above as moths.

 

A seam-ripper hacks

the work in seconds, string

cut to a quarter.  Your love

is the one sunk, midnight

in the Monongahela.  How

did you not wake when

the river broke like a pane?

 

A page slits your fingertip

but you keep turning.  Now

the cicadas start their fall

from tree to lawn.  Cherry

blossoms ride the gutters.

Lightning on the air, men

chasing their hats home.

From:  “Prairie Fever” by Mary Biddinger, pages 53, 54

 

(The Monongahela is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.)

 

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"Saint Monica" by Mary Biddinger

 

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and her newest book, coming soon:  "O, Holy Insurgency"

 

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"Poetry is life distilled." ~Gwendolyn Brooks

 

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Happy Thanksgiving!

 

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

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