Two Poems by Marjorie Power

Small Chest Painted Blue,

celestial blue.
Handles covered in gold leaf.
Lift the lid: a gold interior
and a word riot
carved with a sharp tool –

post-apocalyptic calligraphy?
Words, carved quickly
in a burst of joy.
Illegible, gold-filled words.
Something about healing.

Figures Imagined in a Figureless Icon

               This icon is all soft gold light.
It could be the face of a cliff. The man at the base
               would say the light must come
from the sun. Same with the heavy-set woman
               dancing here, in love
with cobalt blue sky. The man feels inspired
               to rough-draft a poem
at the base of this cliff in the middle of nowhere.
               A pen in his pocket and nothing to write on.
He uses the skin on one arm. He’s done this before, he’s always
               about to explore his dark night of the soul,
each poem a masterpiece, that’s how much
               uncanny light he bears. And the woman?
Surely she weighs far too much to dance
               like an angel?

Marjorie Power’s newest full-length collection, Sufficient Emptiness, was recently published by Deerbrook Editions and is where these poems first appeared. A chapbook, Refuses to Suffocate, appeared in 2019 from Blue Lyra Press. Publications which have taken her work recently include Southern Poetry Review, Commonweal, Mudfish, Show Us Your Papers (anth.), and Artemis Journal. She and her husband live near family in Rochester, New York, after many years in various Western states.

Photo: “Behistun (2)” by Mahdimanavimvi is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0