POETRY MONDAY: May 4, 2011
Gigi Marks
Here is a poet whose lovely work was unknown to me before, although she already has many readers. A collection of her poetry, What We Need, was published by Shortline Editions in 1998, and her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Poetry, Prairie Schooner and other well-known publications. Her chapbook, Shelter, has just been published by Autumn House Press, and a new, full-length collection of her poems, On Her Face, has received the Gerald Cable Book Award and is forthcoming in February 2011 by Silverfish Review Press.
Gigi Marks lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches writing at Ithaca College.
It’s a pleasure to welcome her to our pages with these three new poems.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Cherry Pie
If you can hear the dragonflies
escaping carapace and
skin cells reddening in the sun
and grasses brushing against each other,
you can also hear my fingers
pushing pits from the small fruits
that I will make into a pie.
And the liquid stain spreading
deeper into nail beds and along
the whorled patterns of fingerprints:
if you can hear it, does it sound like
rain flowing in the groove of a ditch
or does it sound like the hiss of steam
that escapes when that pie is baking?
Up the Tree
We remember what it felt like
to be a small, bright thing our parents
held. Here, the bright dots of pink
and red are the fruit, and the limbs
belong to tree and pickers interlaced
together. The leaves and hands both
cradle the fruit; we hear the pop
when stem pulls loose.
The tree has the arms of our mother
and father, and we were
shining and unpicked once–
we shook in the breezes but
were still attached; we ripened, we
might have fallen or we might have
been picked, and we still remember.
A Response
I have begun to shine
in the sun, and the way
the bellies of the summer
glossy melons swell,
so could I. I hear
time’s call to fill,
ripen, and I respond.
What do I do when I want
today to join the sweet fruits
growing from their twisting
vines, and it seems
my choice to stop is gone?
And what will I do tomorrow
when I twist the vine and
snap it anyway?