SageGreenJournal.org
voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Michelle Bitting
Southern California
Michelle Bitting’s third collection,
The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press), was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2016. And her fourth collection, Broken Kingdom won the Catamaran Prize.Michelle is a Lecturer in Poetry and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University and Film Studies at U of Arizona Global. You can learn and read more about MIchelle on her website:
The Slaying
and all this writing on the wall oh I can read between the lines
~ DireStraits
The old art room
alone there with light
from the canyon
spilling in through Spanish windows
I was thinking about
your handsat work
touching color to canvas
I wanted them
to touch me
while I busied myself
in the dark
jiggling images in trays
my vinegar cave
palms wet
the crimson glow
of miniature mouths
and eyes
floating up through chemicals
my world
coming into focus
This was the beginning
where commandments were written
on hours made of water
explosions
in my private parts
colorful displays
like fireworks in fountains
no one but us
could see
When I finally came of age
and ran
the mountain down
every inch
of me liquefied
I wandered
another hundred years
through dry deserts
graffitied by
circling vultures
This was a long time ago
Emily Dickinson
understands
She hands over
her tidy white bloomers
and I wrap
my best appendages
notes from
the back of my throat
ready to unreel
the imaginary
I’m coming home
with my sins intact
having cleared
the giant wailing
crags of
mandibles oceans
of disruption
I’ve buried
myself on this
shore deep in ash
barely a flame
kept alive
The sea no longer terrifies
but erases
the suitors’ gaze
overgrown like cancer
lines woven in sand
a scaffolding of wombs
I unravel the loom
and begin the story again