FLOATS TO THE SKY
Initially I did not plan
…………. a painting of a ladder
………………… faithful to phantom
……………………………. noises before sleep
wearing a clean chemise
…………. beneath dirty shorts
………………… under a worn abaya
……………………………. in my pink slippers
with my red cheeks in the shop
…………. for spots of vitiligo
………………… and smoothing of their
……………………………. plump ragged history.
The canvas came bare
…………. as a bell before it’s struck
………………… by brisk forced air
……………………………. on open waters
or the blue wasp
…………. that loved me
………………… when I was a child
……………………………. with a sting to the pineal
scattering bars through light
…………. all the way to dark
………………… faster than brush
……………………………. leaks down my hand.
Author’s Bio
Mary Gilliland hails from the northeastern United States. Other recent poems appear in Healing Muse and Hotel Amerika, online in Matter and TAB, and anthologized in From The Finger Lakes, Like Light, and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. She has taught at Cornell in Ithaca and in Doha.