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Index Previous Next Melville's Reader With an ease that belies his theme my boy slumps into a mold of his own small back. Chair or taffrail? The waves blend with his thoughts. And far, far out of range, I search my heart for a send off: To follow a runaway's lead? His optimism? To see our little horrors and be social with them? A summer breeze. And now the pages turn themselves; he shifts and shifts. Perhaps the helmsman stares now at the flaming try-works, sees the shapes: harpooners poling, pitching that hissing mass -- a reckoning so stark he slips into a soporific dream then suddenly comes to, but dead astern, his mind ignited wondering how to save the ship from being brought to lee. I remember reading that scene until I could recite it. But now, he lays the book like open wings across his lap and basks and basks in summer's luxurious light. I watch him like a swabber come to save a listing ship and keep a kind of vigil while he naps. Was God above young Ishmael as he packed his bag for Cape Horn, the Pacific? Or, in New Bedford, when he read the fate of whale men? An average, good-hearted, dreamer at the masthead. Watcher not watching, chatting with Queequeg. O little dreamer, never in more danger than on your sunny perch, move your foot or hand an inch, loosen your grip and midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through the transparent air into the summer sea. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Spoon River Poetry Review , Winter/Spring 2008.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Award Winning Poetry - 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020 Best of the Net Nominee 2021 Smiling at the Executioner Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations As if the open barrel were a lotus; its roots anchored in mud. How undeterred by murky water, it submerges and reblooms: petals like crystal glazed and without residue. As if you never felt something move: no welcome and prescient ache, no sudden flexing, no cycle taking shape. No memory. No calendar. No yield – because you are the bullet’s shield. As if you have nothing to lose. As if all that you have learned to love: the beating heart; the mythic glove of a palm blooming in the womb; the scent that follows touch – is suddenly dust. Just the open-grinned, white-toothed stare down this time; the stayed and steady practice on your knees of mastering someone else’s pleas. Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Sky Island Journal , Summer 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020 Best of the Net Nominee 2021 Editor's comment: ...the epitome of what we consider powerful poetry to be. Vivid, palpable imagery saturates the perfect pacing of this svelte, knife-like piece. Full Review Previous Next

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.

Amber Alert Winner of the 2013 New South Writing Contest “Amber Alert" is a poem that is so compressed it fools us into thinking it's only going to be about a road and a deer. The clean lines hold so much more – movement, murder, youth and sensual beauty stolen, worlds of boys and girls in collision, the hunter, the hunted, rituals, and poetry inside poetry – a "hunter's nectar." In the end, the poem offers a saving grace – “her heart.” --Judge, Marilyn Kallet 2013 New South Writing Contest new south : Georgia State University's Journal of Art & Literature

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Index Previous Next First Place - Lazuli Literary Group Plan B And so, we are not to be concerned about living – but about living well. - Socrates, Dialogue with Crito I watch them settle in. David’s Death of Socrates on the projection screen. Clashes of colors like warring teams: a white toga hanging from a teacher’s shoulder; the blood-red robe of a servant, who holds out the deadly drink. An ancient story, someone else’s fight. And yet, the old man who sits upright to take the servant’s chalice. The absence of malice. Gestures like haunting glyphs. We open ourselves to what ifs. What if someone you love, someone who taught you right from wrong; drew you a map of valleys not yet drawn; rowed with you on a winding river: the labyrinth of your young years. A chance to visualize: a wrestling coach; a theater teacher tirelessly recapturing missed lines. What if this person you love comes under fire. A mob seeds hatred, until – like trees that burn too easily – they are cheering for his demise. Why. Because he is winning in an art his accusers used to prize: logic as leak-proof as a Grecian vase. Because he is gaining fans. Because they can. Suppose, like an extended hand, the mob gives your mentor a choice: Disavow all you ever taught. Apologize – or hemlock. They grasp for the extended hand. Why not sign a pity release? Spare your children and wife. Surrender – just for the moment – what defines your life. The boat for escaping is waiting in the bay. The judges want their take. What will history say if friends do not save a man accused in the wrong? Who will teach virtue if the teacher of virtue is gone? Scales that tip and sway. It must have weighed on Crito’s heart to learn the decision was already made; to arrive in a drafty cell for a teacher- student review – so late. How he misread the old man sitting on his cot: alone and unafraid. The question on his teacher’s face: How much are you willing to trade ? We weave, instructed, heart persuaded. We leave it – not for the Midterm – almost certainly for a later day. . Copyright © 2024 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Azure , Vol. 8, March, 2025. Winner of the Lazuli Literary Group's Fall 2024 Writing Contest. Other poems in collection: "Ethos, Logos, Pathos" and "Is There a Final Exam?". Editor's comment: I enjoyed the steady strain of brilliance and the profound sense of wisdom that runs through each poem, well-delivered through narratively evocative language and clearly intentional choices in poetic form! To cloak modernity in a sense of magic is difficult to do, and yet I feel your poems do so in a very useful way. I hope our readers find in these pieces the impetus for an examined life. - Sakina B. Fakhri

Index Previous Next 2017 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi-Finalist Bad Apology As if in an endless rehearsal, I packed and unpacked. The challenge, you said, was to take no more than I’d need. Tenderly, you followed the track of a storm moving in from the east. In bed, a wrinkled map across our laps; you circled a town and highlighted a road. A yellow, satiny, path. When we slept, you tried the path, left markers you had kept for days like these. And the markers were keys. Clues in a moonscape of dust-covered things – a pair of gloves with suede tips; a scarf; a ring. Ruins like proof of a marriage, a story’s skeletal sheen, small deaths, small victories. Maestro, my mourning dove, another chance? Put me back in that place with its signals and gestures and promise of more mistakes. And I’ll show you the hurtful lessons lovers make. . Copyright © 2017 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. 2017 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist Pubished in SWWIM , December 2017. Also featured in SWWIM March 2020 #TBT

Index Previous Next The End of Knowing The absence of Copernicus’s scope. Stuttering logos. The ego’s trophy halo. The quiet, unnatural death of the three artistic proofs. The excuse rather than the fight. Homer’s limping hero, Buddha’s blind eye. Plato’s cave dweller empowered by the shadow maker; the messenger despised. A crush of valedictorians still tethered to their mothers’ seedy placentas. The golden bough made bronze for more to enter. Elysium no longer the nerve center. The present, past, and future: Picasso’s flung bones in Guernica – discordant tones, discordant consciousness. The epic hero homeless, more or less. . Copyright © 2021 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in The Criterion , April 2021.

Index Previous Next Winner of the 1974 Emerson College Original Poetry Award On Rewinding I have been told that by wish and will I fell from His sheep- wool pocket into one dame's arms; and that was birth. I have been told that angels bowl; heaven opens up when the tenth pin rolls. I have been told of cloud-grazing mares— and twice it has rained cats and dogs. I have been told that Saint Peter saw a vision. I have been told that truth may be measured by the shade of one's tongue or the length of one's nose—and twice I have doubted my countenance. I have been told when 'neath the cornered quilt that the sand- man would alight and wave his sack of sleeping dust over my last Hail Mary. I have been told that woman is infamy; man sin. And I am the issue of both. I have been told to accept His rites and wrath. Yet, I have heard over grace and gossip. from bible and book, of womb-wrenching pain, of breached and blue-born, of original sin; and that was birth. I have heard of atmospheric pressure and tropical cyclones; and that was Hurricane Ann. I have heard that fishermen like their wine and all have visions. I have heard that the truth made Socrates stutter. I have heard that some men never sleep. I have heard that opposites attract (and gather ye rosebuds while ye may) I have heard that doubt is the stepping stone to knowledge, and knowledge is the end of man. I have heard too little of too much. And still as green as County Cork, I have but fingered man's seven selves. . Copyright © 2017 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in the Spring 1975 issue of The Emerson Review . M.B., Weymouth North High School, Massachusetts, October, 1974 Contest judge - Charles Simic.

How I Write: A Round Robin Blog Tour April 3, 2014 I want to thank my friend, Catherine Staples, for inviting me to participate in this year’s poetry Round Robin. Catherine is not only a gifted and award-winning poet, but she is also one of the most generous-minded connector-of-poets I have ever known. Here’s the way this blog tour works: Writers are asked to respond to four questions about their writing process and what they are working on now. This is my response to those questions... What are you working on? I like how the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz answered this question in an interview once. In response to the question, “What are you working on right now?” he said something like, “I am trying to get out of the way of my own voice.” It seems to me that this is what we are always trying to do as writers: trying to grow technically by taking on new work thematically. My debut collection of poems, The Lame God , which won the 2013 May Swenson Poetry Award, allowed me to assume the voice of a grieving parent when a child has been abducted and murdered. This work of putting on another individual’s skin was extremely difficult – and yet, I am now discovering, perhaps not as difficult as it is to craft poems wearing one’s own skin. My new collection of poems, tentatively titled Natural Law , explores the intersection of our natural lives and our regulated lives – the unexpected collision between 21st century codes that we label as taboo and that only two generations previously were labeled as liberation. I am also buttoning up for submission an educational memoir called Beginner’s Mind that celebrates a remarkable educator and recommends a philosophy of teaching that, in turn, recommends a philosophy of life. Excerpts from Beginner’s Mind can be found on my webpage. How does your work differ from others of its genre? Ezra Pound often advised T.S. Eliot to leave questions of difference and likeness to the literary historians. Busy yourself with the writing, Pound advised his poet friend, and let the literary historians busy themselves with where — or if — you fit in. I think I’ll listen to Pound and leave it at that. Why do you write what you do? I agree with poets such as Paul Valery and Yevgeny Yevtushenko: I don’t believe that, as poets, we get to choose our subjects. I think, more often than not, our subjects choose us. Poets, like artists of all kinds, are observers of the world; what we bear witness to is not necessarily what we would have selected – and not necessarily what we already know how to relate back to the world. With regard to this latter point, the poet is always challenged to find new techniques and forms for “mastering” — which is, of course, really “serving” — her subject. How does your writing process work? E.B. White wrote his most human and profound essays at his kitchen table, while his children romped about below. Socrates taught some of the most universal and permanent lessons about how to live a decent life, while walking with his students through the over-populated and bustling city of Athens. Regarding poetic process, I would have to say that mine is a combination of kitchen table and daily walks. I drum out lines in daily walks of trochees and iambics and tend to actually craft them at a tiled kitchen table in the most central of all rooms in my home. M.B.

Index Previous Next Cues I got rid of my landline when my mother died. ― for Gina Line in a fertile, buzzing ground; twine like the curled, life-giving cord whose length in a chamber of membranes and underwater sounds once matched mine from rump to crown. Deliverer of sustenance; mythic shield maker; fashioner of a perfect air; perfect cosmos, perfect sphere. And from me to her: wastes to be purged, calls for defenses from a viscous, Delphian orb of still-blooming limbs and senses. It is dots and dashes now. A relapse or a renewal of where we started: your profile in a passing car; a cashier who recaptures your knowing glance; the chance sound, in a crowd, of a woman’s laugh – then your signature sighing. Presences like parting joys. Cues that the dirge is the wedding song – as perhaps we’d known all along: the sudden breeze that catches us off guard; the dog’s inexplicable bark; the smell of rain drying; stars at their brightest before expiring. . Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The National Poetry Review , Fall 2020

ABOUT M.B. McLatchey is an American poet and writer with a lifelong passion for literature, philosophy, and ancient and modern languages. She is a Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S. Ambassador to the HundrED global foundation, Chancellor for the Florida State Poets Association, former Poet Laureate of Florida's Volusia County (2015-2025), Arts & Wellness Ambassador for the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and poetry reader for the Miami based journal SWWIM . She has received numerous awards, including the 2011 American Poet Prize by The American Poetry Journal, the 2012 Robert Frost Award, and was recently nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize as well as Best of the Net award. In 2015, she was a Poet Laureate nominee for the State of Florida. Promoted as offering "The best poetry course in Florida! ", she is featured in the July 2017 issue of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) . M.B. is a graduate of Harvard University with over 30 years of college teaching. The list of institutions she has taught at include the University of Central Florida, Rollins College, Valencia College, Harvard University, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She has also worked as a speechwriter for a state senator, as a reporter for a daily newspaper, as a magazine editor for a major publisher, as a reader and book reviewer for poetry journals, and as a Board of Trustees member for a private college in Vermont. She has authored many literary reviews, compiled text books for Humanities courses, conducted poetry and writing workshops throughout the United States, helped mentor young poets, judged numerous poetry contests, and is a frequent contributor to books on writing, poetry, and teaching. Her debut poetry collection The Lame God was awarded First Place in the 16th Annual May Swenson Poetry Award by Utah State University Press in 2013. She was awarded the 2014 FLP Chapbook Prize by Finishing Line Press for her book Advantages of Believing . Her book, Beginner's Mind , published in 2021 by Regal House Publishing, was awarded the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award as well as the Readers' Favorite Five-Star Award . Her newest book, Smiling at the Executioner, whose title poem was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was released in November 2023 by Kelsay Books. M.B. has received numerous academic teaching awards including Harvard University's coveted Danforth Prize, the Harvard/Radcliffe Prize for Literary Scholarship, and the Brown University Elmer Smith First Place Award for excellence in teaching. Her most recent poetry awards include the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry, the Robert Frost award, the Spoon River Poetry Review’s Editors’ Prize, the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award, the Folio Editor's Prize, as well as a Best of the Net nomination. My Links: My Facebook Site My Author's Guild Site My Amazon Author Site My HundrED Ambassador Site My Linkedin Site My Teaching Philosophy What Others are Saying: Of Poets & Poetry - Interview AWP - In the Spotlight How I Write - Interview Florida State Poets Association Poetry Workshop Reviews Seamus Heaney Edward Field NPR's Tom Williams Florida Book Review Brad Crenshaw Kickstand Poetry - Interview New South: Georgia Spoon River Poetry Review Robert Frost Foundation Atlantic Center for Arts - Interview Sky Island Journal Review Salem College The Author's Guild - Interview Beginner's Mind From Shipyard to Harvard Yard: Embracing Endless Possibilities by M. B. McLatchey Winner of the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award Readers' Favorite ® 2021 Award - 5 Stars A "fourth grade teacher that many readers will wish they’d had"! - Kirkus Review More Info