Marie Gauthier

I adore Stefanie Marlis‘ poems! I’m so happy I chose her book, rife, as my free book from Sarabande. She writes poems I wish I’d written, understated, lyrical, devastating. I suppose if you’ve read this blog with any consistency you’ll know that these are qualities I particularly admire in poems. In any case, I’ve ordered 2 later books, published by Apogee Press, cloudlife and fine, can’t wait for more.

From rife:

Instead

Who hasn’t mistaken the tip of a black shoe
for a mouse? A tissue for a rain-soaked rose — a rose
for a toad? And who hasn’t gestured to a stranger
as if to an old friend?
How easy, then, for the world itself to be mistaken.
To grow a tumor instead of a walnut. To take the flesh
of a good man for sugar, for sand, and blow it away.
A small boy stands in the yard on the most beautiful day
of the year, throwing sand up in the air, yelling
I want something to rain down, and his mother saying,
to the son of the good man, We’ll turn on the hose.