Word count: 141
Paragraphs: 5
If it comes out at all, the poem is Grace, you tell me. Grace as movement, goodwill. We are those who can’t sit still. Your eyes the interior passing of a hidden wall. Completely exposed to the elements. Unveiled. Forefinger to thumb, time into shroud song. In Beat Dreams you write: down into the body / with a candle / through a glass tunnel / where benevolence / and violence join hands // into a mirror.
The paper to your face, you read. So close you eat landscape, bow to an organic spasm of nature. (a single petal / is what I wish to love / if only I knew how to / love such a thing)
Forever in the garden of a petal on the human deck with the whisper of florescence through the most perfect pen.
We’ll talk.
Marina Lazzara is a San Francisco based poet & musician, and instigator behind the small press, Two Way Mirror Books. She has published several poetry books: Everything, Everyday, Mostly and Soak (Two Way Mirror Books, 2015, 2016), The Public Sound (fmsbw Press, 2021) and soon to be published, The House Begins an Alphabet (Lithic Press). She is co-editor of Roots & Routes: Poetics at New College of California (Vernon Press, 2020) and herself received a MA in Poetics from this now defunct institution. Currently, she facilitates writing workshops with the Community Living Campaign. Besides her psych-folk solo project, she plays with the improv band Warm Spell, and has played with Dire Wolves, The Rabbles, Poetics, and Blue Gum Art.