From CONFLUENCE
By Sandra Marchetti:
THE RETURN
“figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,”
~ Octavio Paz, trans. Eliot Weinberger
Beyond the body itself
is the thin blue line,
the sky folding back on its spine.
I saw today the paper gold mists,
the terrible last burnings off of morning;
I have an idea that you ate me then,
and slid belching through the fog—
you slicked my breast
on past your teeth and tasted
my unsalted skin.
I’m small; I know when I’ve been
swallowed whole, been rounded out
gold and beaming,
become a curve in your smile,
the element of light—broken on the tide—
the start of day.
FISSURES
By night
my body disconnects, falls,
lies on the bed in bones
and curls of hair.
There is nothing
to join it.
Skin flicks off
through shudders, and furls—
I lay and am unhitched,
unrolled.
I see what is done darkly,
between shadows and the neatest black.
The low lake below
lets go its nets,
from joints I wash toward confluence,
dissolved in a room of night.
MIGRATION THEORY
The womb a tent,
lit from within, flutters
golden on the wind.
I’m given to pregnancy
dreams again.
Sleeping, the world becomes round once more—
sleeping atop my midriff. Sleeping in
silence and veins and skin—a globe, a missive.
I’m told the child
is ghost; instead
the sleep is lifted into,
alight with curiosities
curling out from the hand.
Sleep. The light sheet ruffles within.
White moths in flight
lift from the body—the skin.
Today’s poems are from Confluence, published by Sundress Publications, copyright © 2015 by Sandra Marchetti, and appear here today with permission from the poet.
Confluence: “’Roam the ground where you are’ writes Sandy Marchetti in Confluence, her impressive debut. Mediating the world in between—lover and beloved, day and night, lost and found, now and then—this lyric poetry celebrates the intimate as ebullient, charged. The lyrics, read through imagery and felt through sound, ‘riff in bits and licks.’ Sandy Marchetti has convincingly made us a world.” —Sally Keith, author of The Fact of the Matter and Dwelling Song
Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a debut full-length collection of poetry from Sundress Publications, and a co-author of Heart Radicals, a collaborative chapbook of love poems. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated letterpress edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, and her first volume, The Canopy, won Midwest Writing Center’s Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. Sandy’s work appears in Subtropics, Sugar House Review, Ecotone, Green Mountains Review, Blackbird, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at Aurora University outside of her hometown of Chicago.
Editor’s Note: Sandra Marchetti’s Confluence is incredibly vivid, electric with unique imagery, and rife with moments of depth and contemplation that force the reader to slow down in wonder. “Beyond the body itself / is the thin blue line, / the sky folding back on its spine;” “I’m small; I know when I’ve been / swallowed whole.” The body is at times singular, existing in pieces, dissolved: “By night / my body disconnects, falls, // lies on the bed in bones / and curls of hair.” The I is the ever-observer, seeing the world as one only can from the lone darkness: “I see what is done darkly, / between shadows and the neatest black.” The lines are blurred between life’s joys and devastations: “I’m given to pregnancy / dreams again;” “I’m told the child / is ghost.” No matter the consideration or the angle of the reflection and the poet’s gaze, forever driving these poems is a rampant lyricism, steady and rhythmic as a heartbeat, fervently alive.
Want to see more from Sandra Marchetti?
Pre-order Confluence from Sundress Publications
Appalachian Heritage
Thrush Poetry Journal
The Rumpus
Words Without Borders
As It Ought To Be 