The Poet’s Zodiac. Number 4 in the second volume of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Series.

Published: August 11, 2011
25 pages
Limited edition: only 49 copies
$9.00

[ S O L D   O U T ]

Mary Meriam  is from rural New Jersey and studied poetry at Bennington and Columbia. Poems from The Poet’s Zodiac are published in Think, Measure, Cascadia Subduction Zone, Two Weeks: An Anthology of Contemporary Verse, and Verse Wisconsin. Other poems have appeared recently in The New York Times, Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Bridges, and Hot Sonnets: An Anthology. She is the author of The Countess of Flatbroke and the editor of Lavender Review.

Christina Rossetti the Twins

And all the while aware the flower tossed
to goblin market is your sister twin,
twin flowers crushed, to greedy goblins lost,
lost like some fallen crumbs, and lost within,
lost to the thrashers, lost to late spring frost.
You get one visit to the rotting woods of sin.
You didn’t know that she could kiss your lips.
She does. And then you part like passing ships.

You lose your mind. A spider dangles near. 
Loud yellow bees beyond the English class
describe your exile, fumble, disappear. 
You write of Henry in the velvet grass, 
but your analysis remains unclear.  
The teacher, being kind, gives you a pass, 
the high school kind, your pages upside-down.
There is a bell. The lessons end. You drown.