PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Laura Madeline Wiseman

PoetryMagazine.com

Laura Madeline Wiseman
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Nightlife (or The River Wife)

At night you and I read aloud like prairie dwellers

of our pioneer past, when there was no way to reach out

of a blizzard, so you reached in and pulled close.

In December under a bare bulb we begin a novel

where a woman’s legs crush in an earthquake.

I shiver, turn up the heat, and ignore the phone.

You ooh as frost covers the windows and open up

to her marriage, motherhood, and wayward lust.

In part two another quake knocks down walls.

The river floods and she drowns by page one-oh-three.

The book is a third done. I say, You can’t kill off

your heroine and expect the story to go on.

You say, Let’s read and see. You stretch and leave

for another pair of blankets from the hall closet.

No, I call out, I want to talk about this. You return,

There’s nothing to talk about. It’s just a book.

I cringe as the lights flickers. Here, you unfold

quilts for us. Fine, I concede, one more chapter.

from Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012)

first appeared in Iguana Review, Vol. 9, 2009

From Clay

You have all seen this: the girl,

breasts hard and sore as fists

and a body capable of lifting

itself between the metal bars

on the playground. Watch her

lose it: the bravado, the muscle

in her arms, and the wide stance

as her scarf and hat are snatched off.

She blinks, half-blind.

She holds herself captive there,

at this moment of change

and tries to fix on who did it.

It could be anyone, a bully,

a lover, some god, or herself.

(Aren’t they all the same?) To her,

we murmur of the loss of such things

as innocence. She knows nothing

of perspective, of who she was—

legs that flew across the ground,

a mouth toughened with sass

and laughter—a memory that jars

with who she’s becoming.

from First Wife (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013)

first appeared in When We Become Weavers (Hand Type Press, 2012)

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