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Index Previous Next Another Inevitable Romance at Olduvai Gorge People are always talking about you here. They picture you with lava under your nails and send maps saying, THIS WAY OUT . How do you tell them about the beautiful evening soups you’re making and about this science between you and the soups? There’s pleasure enough in a banquet, they say, Who wants any more? At the gorge you can’t help wanting more. You want more than ever to bury a skull in your lap and speak to it sweetly: Here is an evening for gazing, old man. Who was it that hammered your skull? You give soup to the skull and watch it come around. Nowhere but at the gorge were there two, you and the skull you love, so pure and full of soup. Still, they picture you with mud on your face. They wonder if you could describe the skull in an objective manner. There is no sense adding up the years since, at the gorge you have counted only the serenest hours. . Copyright © 1978 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Accepted for publication in Science , 1985. Appeared in Advantages of Believing, Finishing Line Press, 2015. Published in Avatar Review , summer 2021.

Index Previous Next Leaving the Mainland The last resort as some wags dub it. And now for the first time since leaving the mainland we feel it. So narrow an approach, the road we're on seems less a slip of land than a channel of water. And everywhere the doubling back of life scenes: herons teetering on one leg as if to remain prescient of two worlds - this one that warms us through car glass, and the other a stirring life submerged. Island of bones. So overwhelmed were they by life's remains - so many bones - that de Leon and trails of others found there. The terrible name must have given breadth to their worst fears. Ships like theirs brought to grief by poorly marked reefs or the lure of a light on a cow's tail. And after disaster, the call - but not for help- among the islanders. A wreck! Prosperity from ruined ships - a life no one had entertained. Still, there they were chasing submerged treasures. A slip in judgment, perhaps. But given the choice between limestone too hard for digging graves or an ocean of pyramids, who could blame them - certainly neither of us - for wanting to live? . Copyright © 2004 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in The American Poetry Journal , Summer/Fall 2005.

From the Heroic to the Classical Age Great Works of Ancient Greece by M. B. McLatchey Against a backdrop of economic strife, political unrest and relentless war with neighboring regions, the ancient Greeks give the world philosophy – a preoccupation, as Socrates says, not with simply living, but with living well. As the readings in this text will demonstrate – from the ancient epics of the Warrior Age of heroes to the teachings of the great thinkers in the Golden Age of Athens – living well for the ancient Greeks will mean answering the same question again and again: “What should we call a good life?” For introductory-level students in the Humanities, as for the most accomplished scholars, this is a question for all of us. This collection of ancient writings is intended to expose students to the original voices of the past in “primary source” form. Unlike the historian who summarizes Aristotle’s “Ethics of Happiness”, the primary sources herein give us Aristotle himself – his exact words as they appeared when he etched them into papyrus in the 4th century BC. Because a reading proficiency in the ancient languages is not expected of undergraduate students in the Humanities, the ancient texts translated into English here have been carefully chosen by the author based on their affinity to the original text and their adherence to the true spirit of primary source translation. Available on Amazon Book Details: Paperback: 182 pages Publisher: CreateSpace; 3rd edition (May 26, 2020) Language: English ISBN-13: 978-1724212344 Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.4 x 10 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pound

Award Winning Poetry - 2012 Winner of the 46er Prize for Poetry Bingo Night for Missing and Exploited Children B efore we went underground. Before you fell through a gyre with no sound. I f one piece were unwound. If you had run. If we had looked for you sooner. If you had screamed. If the gods had intervened. N ascent. Still blooming, the orchid on your window sill. A thrill of color. G one. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Phantom limb. If the soul leaves the body, we did not feel it go. Nothing and everything cloistered in stone. O mens we left for others. Ripples on a resting pond. The whistling of a breeze. The imprint on the ovaries. Copyright © 2012 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2012 Adirondack Review's 46er Prize for Poetry. Published in The Adirondack Review , Summer 2013. Original version published here . The 46er Prize refers to the forty-six major peaks of the Adirondacks. Hikers who reach all forty-six summits are deemed "Forty-sixers." Also published by Beacon Press in The Blue Room Collective's anthology, Grabbed , Summer 2020. Previous Next

Index Previous Next On Forgetting Ash Wednesday Between the harvesting and sowing: the stubble burn. Embers recycled from a dying fire; the promising scent of charred straw. Cinders inextinguishable as newfound desire. The calendar plan that out of the slag a new upright row might spring: Lazarus flowers, roses of Jericho. All this to call me home. As if to dress me in a penitent’s sackcloth, when for decades – even now – I would have come on my knees: a girl in love with high relief; stained-glass mysteries; the lightness and the weight of your hanging figure; the promise of one love and end of days. Who else could have sown, then seeded, this divide? Who else left this shadowy thumb print between my eyes? . Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Iris Literary Journal .

Index Previous Next Prometheus's Regret I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade. ― Soldier’s Creed The Hand A harder man was what I meant to make, my print an atlas stitched to a boy’s soft side. His mind changed from the heat inside my palm – awakened to a god who trades in brother love and psalms. The Head So neatly planned, but look how you have lost him. See how our quiet Titan lifts the sky? Never an ending or starting. Always the twilight of shoulders changed into mountain ranges; always the life force tested and departing. The Heart Raiment of gold, a bronze shield, all the rivers on earth, I would give back. How to weigh the gains against the losses? The anthem instead of the man; a mother’s birth-breaths; the ground still soft where he took his first steps. . Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Halcyone Literary Review , December 2019.

Smiling at the Executioner Poetry by M. B. McLatchey Published November 22, 2023 by Kel say Books REVIEWS M.B. McLatchey’s Smiling at the Executioner is a brilliant collection of poems inspired by the Stoic philosophy, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying these poems, which know how to live on their own, to take root in your heart. These are the kind of poems you hope you can remember to quote when in moments of uncertainty. McLatchey is not some one-trick theme artist who will sing you “I get knocked down, but I get up again”—NO!—she’s the one who will serve you images, sounds, and textures that make you want to read this book aloud. She will bring you the taste of bread, the promises of olives, the singing of hunger, and the love of desire. —J.P. Dancing Bear , editor of Verse Daily M.B. McLatchey pens these perspicacious, wise, and musically intelligent poems with a sincere gratitude for being alive in an era when “our histories are shadows on a wall; our memories rote lessons that flicker and mutate.” These masterfully crafted poems are an antidote to our complicated age of technology, machine-enforced intelligence, and screen-based isolation. They applaud every moment of humanity, from folding a fitted sheet to drawing a bath, for knowing “what we were, how to retrieve our former selves,” and for putting the necessary spirit back into spirituality. —Jen Karetnick , Founder and Managing Editor of SWWIM , author of Inheritance with a High Error Rate , winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award Smiling at the Executione r is a philosophical exploration of survival, love, marriage, men, family—and words— inspired by the Stoic mind, using image and metaphor from ancient and contemporary myth. Like an ancient story, this book is so rich it is hard to pick and choose—each poem a meditation on the Stoic desire to keep loving one another, and to persevere. When writing of forgiveness, McLatchey writes, “not a sinner’s crawl; a purging of the stench /of an unkept stall; a never forgotten love, /Penelope’s woven—and unwoven—shawl.” —Lee (Lori) Desrosiers , Managing Editor/Publisher of Naugatuck River Review , author of Keeping Planes in the Air , Salmon Poetry If they aren't already familiar with her degrees from Harvard and Brown Universities, the title of M.B. McLatchey's book will draw readers to the superbly written content. Even though the author has endured hardships, she faces them with ideas that flow serenely off the page. It's beautiful to glimpse McLatchey's understanding of her range of control and the way she expresses her emotions. With rich imagery that never fails to create a lasting image in one's mind, McLatchey paints vivid scenes that entice each of the senses. Some poems have so much depth the reader may wonder about the challenges the author has endured and briefly consider the role of "J" in the pieces dedicated to that person. Many of the pieces unfold like stories, leading the reader to devour the author's thoughts and absorb the language. Smiling at the Executioner is a great selection for readers who enjoy eloquently written poems within a work of collected thoughts. —Courtnee Turner Hoyle , Reader's Choice Where to Order: Kelsay Books Amazon Barnes & Noble Book details: Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kelsay Books (Nov 22, 2023) Language ‏ : ‎ English Paperback ‏ : ‎ 100 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1639804544 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1639804542 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.25 x 9 inches

Index Previous Next 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit The Retrieval Here again. The way you used to wake us – rouse us with that impatient stare. A stubborn, boy-crazy, eighth-grader you make the same requests. We say them with you. Isn't this what happens when some of us bring water to the dead? This private shift to living only sometimes with the living. Eight months among the missing and you come padding back in your white socks and jeans; specter of grief we locked away before it made us more dry-mouthed and speechless than our counterparts in dreams. Grief like light encounters in a half-sleep: your moist face in a morning mirror. Are you in someone else's too? O, city of mirrors. And how, each night you casually resume at every threshold to every listing room that awkward lean -- the one you would do when you could not ask, but knew that we could help. Your bony shoulder barely touching the wall; your right foot crossing the other. So much the pose of one who is neither coming nor going. It's difficult to know why we should wake. Still, every day we rise like guardians ex officio, like gate-keepers to a city of passing shades -- each one a new acquaintance with your face. Each one a new petition for deliverance of the innocent and quaking. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008.

For a foster child Award Winning Poetry - 2014 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi-Finalist The Bath For a foster child The slightest wrong move could mean tidal waves. Certain disaster to a boy with everything resting on delicate tissue – a bruised knee to which you command a corps of plastic ships – an austere but (you promise) heavenly beach where men may lie down in soft sand, a tiny fold in your thigh; write letters and find oranges to eat; plan the next battle. Hard that you know so much about these distances from home. A trumpet blast! You steam your mission out. Predictably bad weather and still another perilous gorge of falls and fleshy islands. The search resumes for citrus or, at least, friendly harbor. I wish you both -- and not another tour of calculations tossed or unchartered, and not this shadowy map on water. Copyright © 2014 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Naugatuck River Review's 6th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest Semi-Finalist. Published in Naugatuck River Review , November 2014. Previous Next

Index Previous Next Trigger Warning We have art in order not to die of the truth. ― Friedrich Nietzsche This spring, as in previous springs we will have our themes: A young man will take his mother to bed – then blind himself with her dress pins when he learns the truth. Another mother will die yearning for her son’s lost youth – ten years in combat in some hell called Troy, ten more at sea, a champion of the gods, or a beautifully- carved chess piece. In our fifth week, the most promising student will stop coming to class – uncounted, unseen. Some of us will look for her in our dreams. In one, she will wave, relieved, as she sails away. In another, she will signal a code – fragments like shards from an ancient, splintered vase; runes like self-spun elegies which, as a class, we will read. A champion of the gods, or a beautifully- carved chess piece? In the tenth week, the quietest one will change his place from Enrolled to Audit – a jockeying for a Pass on this charted and uncharted course – or kiss and a roll of the dice. A look at his source. The same week a veteran marine will submit his term’s work – a dense, hard-copy, thoughtful, heap – then swallow and swallow and swallow and finally sleep. A champion of the gods, or a beautifully-carved chess piece? The rest of us will proceed. Like clockwork, carillon will ring. Gowns, assemblies, deans. Swallows will stir the clock tower – Lazarus-like – and crocuses will flower on the campus green. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Harpur Palate of Binghamton University, Fall 2018, Vol. 18.1.

Index Previous Next 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award - Semi Finalist At the Grieving Parents Meeting In the parish hall of Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church, pictures of murdered children in our hands, we huddle in a sphere of folding chairs and a flickering fluorescent light. Some lean near the coffee and coffee cake that, each week, has the same floury smell of sympathy and each week, the same sour taste. By the tissues, a painted soapstone statuette – our patron saint. O, the watches and keys and gloves that appeared at your feet! A ruse that my mother relied on to make me believe that our smallest petitions are heard, that events, with the proper appeals, can be reversed, that almost anything lost can be retrieved. As a girl I chanted your name while I followed the trail: pockets, under the bed, under the sofa cushions, pockets again. Something's lost and can't be found. Please, St. Anthony, look around. When it didn’t turn up, I brought you coiled vines – like the petals I bring to my daughter’s room as if to stir up stale air – and the search would resume. Look at the priestess of talismans I have become: her saint card from First Communion in my purse; lodestones for paperweights at work. For good luck, a horseshoe-shaped necklace under my shirt: the crescent shape of the sacred moon goddess in Peru or the bow of the Blessed Mother’s cradling arm, arch like the threshold of her sacred vulva, twine like the helix of lovers. Look at the virtuoso that was finally birthed, who would use this ring of linked hands not for fellowship or grace, not to make my peace on earth, not to lay my gifts at your feet and give up the search, but to summon the face she petitioned and conjure a curse. . Copyright © 2011 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award - Semi Finalist Published in River Styx 87, Spring 2012.