Wives’ Tales: Poems by Marjorie Maddox. Number 3.03 in the Seven Kitchens Press Editor’s Series.

Release date: February 9, 2017 [100 copies]
27 pages
$9.00

Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry, including True, False, None of the Above, Local News from Someplace Else, and Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation. Co-editor with Jerry Wemple of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, she is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. For more information, visit her web site here. 

Crying Wolf

You’ve walked so far from your own body, 
nobody knows whose voice you are.  
You can see more; you can watch 
out, peer down at the bed or the meadow– 
the slick magician in charge of the trick 
or the audience participant. 
The telescope might pick you up: 
one note bobbing in the sea 
lost from its chantey, the “baaa” 
caught in the fleece of a thousand sheep 
on holiday from home.  
You’ve sliced open the wolf,  
gathered stones for his stomach, 
even attached an anchor, 
and still you glub-glub in the Atlantic, 
keep looking for the white flag 
in your voice, the proper code. 
Yes, they’re repetitive, 
the dits and dahs that lead into the thicket, 
too slowly around the bend of your hope 
into the back room. The smoke is thickest 
before the scream. There is always more:  
the night, the howl, the teeth glistening 
in your eyes. 

• Purchase Wives’ Tales here or send an e-mail query to sevenkitchenspress at gmail dot com.
• Keep up with the author’s readings and events here.
• Read Kathleen Kirk’s review of Wives’ Tales here.
• Read David J. Bauman’s review of Wives’ Tales here.
• Read an interview with Marjorie at Speaking of Marvels.