What's in a Name
In mine, mar to ruin, to spoil, to disfigure
See also maar, a crater-filled lake,
formed when, in a volcanic explosion
lava flowed down a mountain, scarred
the land, burned a hole into the earth
which later grew into crystalline beauty.
Above the lake, celine: the sky.
Celine, also meaning heaven– we cast
our eyes up to the blue searching for it
far above and beyond us, not on this
flawed, scarred world where Marceline
means young warrior, or, one dedicated to Mars
who races fiery horses through this
disfigured land, or at times, raises a
sacred shield to protect hard-won peace.
Green shoots unfurl from razed ground
marcelling the land, emerald
waves lap the dusty red shore.
There’s a line in my name which runs
through the ruined and wrecked seas
sews threads to heaven; perhaps
the way there is
through fault and folly.
Not heaven, but nine months by rocket
from where we are (from here), is Mars,
where, under scarlet sky, iron rivers rock.
After a storm, unsettled, dust haunts the air
apparition of longing, red ghost of absence.
I Want to Stop Explaining POTS1
For Roric
I want my son’s stomach,
a knotted quark,
to unwind itself
his feet,
red-purple shoes,
to fade to pale pink
his blood to rise
as my pulse-rate
does each time
he dizzies
himself awake. I want
his Usain-Bolt-heart
to stop racing
I want to return
to the days when
his arms were butterflies
fluttering at the pool, when he
was Helios beaming at me
rather than Icarus, melting, falling
when he was
fearless. when he
had nothing to fear.
At nine, I took him to the symphony to hear, Icarus at the Edge of Time.
In this retelling, the boy flies to a black hole where he carefully skims
the edges of the circle the way an ice skater rings a pond. This Icarus leaves his
space ship for an hour, returns a thousand years later. Black hole as funhouse mirror. The symphony written by quantum physicist Brian Green.
Today, my son tires
when day breaks,
when night falls,
all hours in between.
He moves from little bad days
to real bad days weeks/months counted in pill packs by his bright fingers
From campus, he texts me interesting facts from his astrophysics class:
Black holes form from dying stars heavier than the sun
Black holes do not die, but slowly evaporate over time
Black holes may contain wormholes, tunnels linking two universes
(one where he’s healthy, another ours) but that is still a story, Einstein’s theory, not yet fact
Icarus, flew, despite the odds,
the end.
Icarus, an asteroid, circles the sun
as mine wakes to another clouded day.
My (Mother’s) Wedding
If I told you that she went 12 years without a wedding,
that she twisted the cheap gold band on her finger
like a talisman, wishing the lie a truth, that each year
she fought me over the wishbone stuffed inside our
Thanksgiving bird, then, when her wish to be
wife came true, her wedding was no occasion
for joy: my grandfather ramrod stiff, walking her up
the aisle like a guard escorting a prisoner to the chair,
my grandmother, her lips frozen into a thin red line,
the groom, angrily tugging at the collar of his Sears suit,
and my mother, drunk and crying at her own reception
in the clubhouse of our apartment complex on a blustery
winter's day, then, you might understand why
for my wedding, she insisted on the rented mansion, the big band,
two cakes, a white sponge with raspberry buttercream filling
and an espresso chocolate groom’s cake, as well as a bowl full of red
rose petals which friends were to rain down upon us, and you might
not be surprised to hear that she stormed upstairs, her breath a bar
or possibly all the bars at closing on New Year’s Eve,
to scream at me because I botched the bouquet toss and despite
all this, and all that comes later-what I remember most is
the sky, a movie-set of early summer, the soft scent of
white clover beneath my feet as I walked through
the wildflowers to promise my love, and the sweet taste of cake
on my husband’s lips as we kissed, as we kissed, and we kissed.
Little Lamb
In the cave of forgotten dreams
we return, slipping
into shadow and soft silence
Fall back before time
when nights were made of
black smudge and ochre
images racing across stony ground. Once, a tall human
Did they dream as we do?
Did they dream of us?
painted palms scarlet, rained
cloudburst across white rock,
wound-red murmuration.
Dreams of blood-coloured berries
beating hearts hanging on ice glazed branches
singing their lonely song.
An archaeologist recalls his circus days,
riding on one wheel, throwing
things up to catch them
again, again, again. He
dreams of lions, wakes alone–
rueful, his tender neck unravaged.
Another. Deeper, womb white and rocky,
a boy walks with a wolf,
disappears in the dark.
The boy, my son, the wolf
may be me:
protector/predator.
I am pacing and hungry
want more in my maw,
more to gnaw over
Give me
the meat and the marrow
Let me feast before winter’s sleep.
I turn, watch
shadows dance
on stone walls lit by flame.
Startled awake,
my son balled in the crook of my arm,
little lamb, his curls spun gold in the fire’s glow.
I could just
eat him up, I think, as his plump foot
enters my mouth’s dark chasm.
Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist whose writing has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, trampset, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, and others. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, when not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the EDM show. Read more at www.marcelinewhitewrites.com.
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