A Literary Arts Journal
MD Marcus
3
poems
MD Marcus is a freelance writer and poet who loves keys, the color blue, and a good nude illusion. Her work has appeared on Salon as well as in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Eunoia Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Communicators League, Motherhood May Cause Drowsiness, among others. Please read everything she writes and visit her on Instagram or at mdmarcus.com.
images:
Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research, [[PAJ ASA]]
NASA Clementine UV-VIS color image of the Reiner Gamma albedo feature on the Moon. The image uses 3 UV-VIS wavelength ratios as its red (750 nm/415 nm), green (750 nm/950 nm), and blue (414 nm/750 nm) channels
above Public Domain
Musée Paul-Dupuy à Toulouse - Collection d'horlogerie
above Creative Commons
an alarm clock rings
today is arms
at awkward angles
blistering smells
hair pried apart
a decade of ache
in one inch of muscle
taut black gauze
bubbled over flesh
covering eyes
and I cling to yesterday’s radiant colors
mirrors that whisper my name
disremembering by moonlight
thoughts
of you
float
and fill
the tight
space
beneath
my nails;
wishful
things
of time
and
of touch
cradle
the dark
in your
absence,
occupy
places
you once
conquered
All we know of harvest
Between each braid
pink American flesh reddens
beneath the Kenyan sun
burning rows of tender scalp
dance the lines of the shamba
waiting to be fertilized
a deeper brown almost
imperceptible to our eyes
unfamiliar with this dirt and toil
our lungs sing to fill at this altitude
America is a day in the past
still in the dark as we sip sweating
water bottles dusted with manure
There is a different thirst in this land
The sheep bleat and we pause
the future will eat