Search Results

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Forthcoming in Inventory , 2020 Prev 13 Next GREED I submit to my greed along the trail of voices and the footprints of books that disrupt my peace I learn each word down to the stem of the rhyme taking pleasure from the hem of my writing skirt in the vertigo of poetry adjusting the verse to the danger Epic and homeless AVIDEZ Eu sigo a minha avidez pelo caminho das vozes e as pegadas dos livros a tirarem o sossego Cada palavra aprendida até à haste da rima tomando o gosto à bainha da saia da minha escrita na vertigem da poesia ajustando o verso ao perigo Epopeia e desabrigo Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Forthcoming in Inventory , Princeton University, 2020. Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List

Index Previous Next NRR's 6th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist The Bath For a foster child The slightest wrong move could mean tidal waves. Certain disaster to a boy with everything resting on delicate tissue – a bruised knee to which you command a corps of plastic ships – an austere but (you promise) heavenly beach where men may lie down in soft sand, a tiny fold in your thigh; write letters and find oranges to eat; plan the next battle. Hard that you know so much about these distances from home. A trumpet blast! You steam your mission out. Predictably bad weather and still another perilous gorge of falls and fleshy islands. The search resumes for citrus or, at least, friendly harbor. I wish you both -- and not another tour of calculations tossed or unchartered, and not this shadowy map on water. . Copyright © 2014 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Naugatuck River Review's 6th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist. Published in Naugatuck River Review , November 2014.

Index Previous Next Winner of the 2011 American Poet Prize 1-800-THE-LOST The weight of the receiver in my hand: the down bird in my palm first lifting you. The counselor’s words: rehearsed, a burlesque bland. The shift in time, the shift to looking through her lens: today you are just one of two hundred lost. My eyes fix on our bright fence. I say your name, but you are no one new – caught in an ancient book that she’ll condense. I want her to discuss you in the present tense. I want the gods to stop pretending love calls the departed home. We called you with our various loves, had hope, hovered over still fields; made wind like the gods do before they come unhinged, let their rage loose on an unresponsive yield. Fields gone deaf and dumb; unshaken, fruitless ground, unmoved by a neighborhood of mothers who left their own to find you – tables, like mine, set. I want the gods to swallow their prayers whole. Choke up my child like the Olympians – a girl, unbruised by her journey down their throats. I want her at my table: fruit, alms that the gods, I see, can give or take – balm for the irritations I caused, or they caused; gifts between us or perhaps among themselves – a girl that they’ll barter away. I’m here. And I’m willing to talk, or trade. . Copyright © 2011 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the American Poet Prize for 2011 Published in The American Poetry Journal , Spring 2012.

For a foster child Award Winning Poetry - 2014 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi-Finalist The Bath For a foster child The slightest wrong move could mean tidal waves. Certain disaster to a boy with everything resting on delicate tissue – a bruised knee to which you command a corps of plastic ships – an austere but (you promise) heavenly beach where men may lie down in soft sand, a tiny fold in your thigh; write letters and find oranges to eat; plan the next battle. Hard that you know so much about these distances from home. A trumpet blast! You steam your mission out. Predictably bad weather and still another perilous gorge of falls and fleshy islands. The search resumes for citrus or, at least, friendly harbor. I wish you both -- and not another tour of calculations tossed or unchartered, and not this shadowy map on water. Copyright © 2014 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Naugatuck River Review's 6th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest Semi-Finalist. Published in Naugatuck River Review , November 2014. Previous Next

Index Previous Next Learning the Scriptures Molusco … Aqui… Aqui. Bucket in hand, I follow his lead. His silhouette in the early light strikes a perfect toe point – not ballet but the liturgy’s greeting in a sun-steamed fandango. The hard, muddy floor of low tide, his stage. I see a clam spit where he taps his toe. Plunging my fingers into the cold, black muck, I wriggle it out: meal and sacrifice. A ritual-like rhythm that the dance ignites. When we steam the clams, the smell of vinegar and hops bubbling in the broth overtakes us. A purifying incense. Pabst Blue Ribbon for him and since I am ten, Porto with Ginger Al e. In the pot the clams flower and pop. Pelican-like, he tips his head back to let the fat belly slide down whole. Delicioso . Body, blood, soul, divinity. Clean-shaven for Mass. Brown. Azorean. Vovô , to me. A welcome substitute to the homily: Tap. Plunge. Smell. Dance. Taste . But not in a faith, not in a language I knew yet. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Naugatuck River Review : A Journal of Narrative Poetry That Sings, Summer/Fall 2018 – Issue 20.

Index Previous Next Where Winter Spends the Summer On a beach towel print of a bosomy mermaid that reads I ♥ Miami. In an everglade’s wild plan marked with grilles and canopies. Between concrete, leaning towers and a tide meant for healing. In a daze, dreaming, gazing at Odysseus’ wine-dark sea. In the unclothed body’s prescient haze. On the front of a postcard – a postcard painter’s dream – in dabs of yellow and green, intended, as postcard painters will, to make a symphony of bathers between brush marks; map out, in palm-tree fences, a new world – an answer to the sirens call, when all the bathers want is no world at all. . Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in SWWIM , September 19, 2019.

Published Poems Title Journal Year Award 1-800-THE-LOST American Poetry Journal 2012 2011 American Poet Prize - Winner Sort by Year * forthcoming

Videos Videos: Fres h Perspectives in Poetry - Video Series . In partnership with Atlantic Center for the Arts and with sponsorship from The Florida Humanities Council, M.B. hosts a four-part video series on poetry. Join her on a journey of learning from the masters. Intro: How forms liberate the poet The Sonnet: Then and Now The Odyssey & Today’s Returning Veteran Seamus Heaney: Master of the Lyric Book Trailer for Beginner's Mind ( Link ) Vero Beach 2026 Lenten Reading (Link ) Podcasts: Education in Literature Podcast . Listen to M.B. (Beginner's Mind ) and author Kevin McIntosh (Class Dismissed ) discuss the philosophical underpinnings of their new education-themed books with Regal House Publishing's Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk who do a spectacular job of getting to the story behind the stories while also eliciting foundational commentary from these seasoned pros on the challenges and rewards of teaching in today's age. Interviews: Of Poets & Poetry - FSPA How I Write Kickstand Poetry Atlantic Center for the Arts AWP - In the Spotlight NPR (Utah) - Radio with Tom Williams The Authors Guild - Member Spotlight Sequestrum - Contributor Spotlight My Links: My Author's Guild Site My Amazon Author Site My Facebook Site My Linkedin Site My Teaching Philosophy Can Writing Be Taught? What Others are Saying: Florida State Poets Association Poetry Workshop Reviews Seamus Heaney Edward Field Florida Book Review Brad Crenshaw New South: Georgia Spoon River Poetry Review Robert Frost Foundation Sky Island Journal Reviews Salem College Book Reviews by M B: Paradise Drive Accommodations The Clock of the Long Now Dark Card Earthly Freight Selected Essays by MB: Garcia-Aguilera and Barbara Parker Odysseus' Wounded Healer Beginner's Mind in the Classroom Published Chapters from Beginner's Mind : Right Notes Isms The Good Thief A Purple Heart Ex-Patriots Fallen Angels A Good and Simple Meal

Index Previous Next War in Eurasia We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves. - Orwell, 1984 We sleep like guard dogs, one eye open, groomed to unlock from one another’s folds. Older, a cooler grey than our adult years. Your breast, like a forbidden prayer or scent or thought, presses against my arm. The war in Eurasia rages on. The dull flicker of the TV; the news anchor’s lips tattooed a deep party red mouthing vowels: A and E, and O – not I or U. Everything in black and white, or streams of sepia. We hardly remember the difference between the news and truer truths; the sum of two plus two. Harvest seasons pass. Dictionaries yield a sulphury marsh gas. Winters sprout days of halcyon, golden wheat. We yearn for myths that lean on goddesses of crops, a mother’s loss and rage, a revenge drought. Love is the warrior’s call. We knew it in the womb, first breath, when we were made to choose: a dying art, or this waking death. . Copyright © 2022 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Sequestrum , Issue 32, June 2022.

We Are Coming Soon Sign up to be the first to know when we go live. Notify Me Thanks for submitting!

Index Previous Next Ocracoke With undying love, to my husband. ― Christmas 2013 In a letter to his wife, a Japanese poet said I will be back , and, I will cross channels and oceans, and islands, and rushing rivers. And for the rest of their years, his flannel shirt that she made her own, caught her tears as they might in a lover’s hold. What are our days , she asked, or distances, or years, if not one heartbeat measured out in country miles and tears between two coupled souls ? As once in Ocracoke, barrier island, barrier to all that does not hold against cruel winds and so, not love, which holds and takes its fortitude from simpler things: the open hand that follows cruel words; the kiss that aches to cool, like a shore bird, in wading water; the gestures of a land within a land. A dress that I saw in a shop in Ocracoke and I dreamed, as we ferried away, as a small girl dreams, of sea winds catching its hem in a gust of sea spray above my knees. And you wanted to please me, because, I would come to see, that is what lovers do. Let’s go back , you said. And I noticed the difference in miles for me and you: what for me was a glitch in our plans and a girlish want, was for you an open hand, a summer dress on a wooden hanger, ocean and sand that you would cross – again and again. No miles from lover’s want to lover’s gift, one sky from isle to isle. . Copyright © 2013 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Briar Cliff Review , Spring 2016.

Index Previous Next Before the Common Era Before the Common Era Before Epictetus, the Aztecs, Machiavelli; before Berkeley, Spinoza, Calvin, Hegel and Heidegger; before the Bavarian Illuminati; before Marie Antionette; before Schelling; before Hayek, Derrida, and Bukowski; before the laws of timeless nature; Kerouac. Before Nirvana analysis and conceptual tunneling; before subtle physics; before alternative systems; before god, I remember we planted some seeds in a narrow back lot, a trellis with open ties for the sprouts like bait and lure in sod tiles. And we waited for spring like we waited for our first child: a new world of water and marrow. And we knelt near the terraces, brushing the earth. And the air’s soft tongue kept us close and at our tasks, not missing things unsaid, anthems unsung. . Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Quadrant , January 2021