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Spreading Sand in Abdullah's Garden
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You told how she saw faces at the window
and believed in UFOs and gypsies
and funny old superstitions. “She turns
in a circle three times and blows a kiss
into the wind every time she sees
a black cat,” you said. Everyone laughed at that.
You told about her religious medal,
placed in a glass of water at her bedside.
“It isn’t bogeymen she needs to fear,”
you told them, “it’s the rust from that medal.”
They laughed at that, too. Fear amuses
in a large group when lights are blazing
and music is loud or someone is
playing show tunes on a piano.
It is less funny, I think, after the guests
are gone and your true love is asleep.
It is less funny when you get up
to get a glass of water and there is
a face at the bedroom window and
something large with flashing lights in the yard.
It is less funny that your hands are shaking,
that you can see your breath in the air--
an icy cloud--and you whisper to your
true love, “Wake up! O please, o please wake up!”
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Writer
Bio
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Martina Newberry is the author of four novels and several books of poetry, including Lima Beans and City Chicken: Memories of the Open Hearth, The Star Jasmine Club--An Adult Fable, and An Apparent, Approachable Light, which won i.e. Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998. Her work has appeared widely in such literary publications as 5 AM, Amelia, Atom Mind, Bellingham Review, Black Buzzard Review, Catalyst, Connecticut Poetry Review, Context South, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, International Poetry Review, The Ledge, New Laurel Review, Passages North, Piedmont Literary Review, Sonora Review, Southern Review of Poetry, Touchstone, and The Willow Review.
martinanewberry@onebox.com
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Other
Pedestal Published Works
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