S.Marie Clay

Let us talk about the
blackness of
heaven and winged
bats.
It is the back then
I am after. Even
though
the past is a pregnant stove
burning mutton, I
want it. My daughter
screams, the kitchen fills with
lung. I place her near
an open
window. She knows something
I do not.
Lake Michigan
arrived as melted lace and
superstition. And so did
she. To
drop
a
knife
means
a
man
will visit. To
drop a spoon means
a child will visit. The Italians
say: bread that comes out of
sweat tastes better.

S.Marie Clay earned her MFA from Columbia, Chicago where she was a Follett Scholar and curator of Word 6: An Architecture of Multi Modal Poetry. Her work has appeared most recently in Drunken Boat, Eleven Eleven, Columbia Poetry Review, Caliban, H_NGM_N, Thrush Poetry Journal, Forklift Ohio, and others. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Black Tongue Review.