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ABOUT
ABOUT
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Chancellor Florida State Poets Association
Florida Poet Laureate Volusia County
Winner of 2011 American Poet Prize
Award Winning Poetry -
2020
Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020
Best of the Net Nominee 2021
Smiling at the Executioner
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
As if the open barrel were a lotus;
its roots anchored in mud.
How undeterred
by murky water, it submerges
and reblooms: petals like crystal
glazed and without residue.
As if you never felt something move:
no welcome and prescient ache,
no sudden flexing, no cycle taking shape.
No memory. No calendar. No yield –
because you are the bullet’s shield. As if
you have nothing to lose. As if all that you have
learned to love: the beating heart; the mythic glove
of a palm blooming in the womb; the scent that follows
touch – is suddenly dust. Just the open-grinned,
white-toothed stare down this time;
the stayed and steady practice on your knees
of mastering someone else’s pleas.
Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved.
Published in Sky Island Journal, Summer 2020
Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020
Best of the Net Nominee 2021
Editor's comment: ...the epitome of what we consider powerful poetry to be. Vivid, palpable imagery saturates the perfect pacing of this svelte, knife-like piece.
Full Review
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