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

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.

The Lame God: Florida Book Review Reviewed by Marci Calabretta Because the adage is true that there are too many books and so little time, I've learned to devour poetry quickly. When I picked up M. B. McLatchey's debut collection of poetry, The Lame God , I expected to breeze through it as easily as any other book. But The Lame God is not like any other book. In fact, it is exactly the sort of book you can only read by pondering slowly. It is also a book that calls readers to action, even before the first poem begins. In the preface, McLatchey writes that roughly 2,000 children "are reported missing daily to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children." An opening epigraph next reads, "Acting quickly is critical. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are ultimately murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction." In the first section, each poem resonates with the frustration of waiting helplessly for a child to return. The narrator in "1-800-THE-LOST" says, "I want her to discuss you in the present tense. // I want the gods to stop pretending love calls the departed home." Each subsequent section delves deeper into the anguish of loss. First, McLatchey shows the frustration which evolves into real and righteous anger, demanding that the guilty "choke up my child like the Olympians— / a girl, unbruised by her journey down their // throats." Then comes the lashing-out and self-blame. "Apology" is a list poem of regrets that will break your heart: For—trusting your safe return-- not missing you. For trusting the gods. For my second-rate circumspection; for trusting the odds. [...] For teaching you not to shout. For us still uncovering your terror—layer by layer. For this sputtering sound of real prayer. Finally, comes the acceptance—not of absence, or of seeking justice, or even of grief itself. No, these poems finally settle into the acceptance of waiting for news of any kind—good or bad— because either way, these parents will be there when their children come home. "Do not worry, daughter. We are not leaving our watch / or showing our cards—just changing the guard." McLatchey is the poet standing at the gate, holding a torch to keep hope aflame even as the darkness descends. A graduate of Harvard University, Brown University, and Goddard College, McLatchey currently teaches writing and humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, Florida. Well-versed in Classical mythology, she knows how to grit her teeth and tell the traumatic story in a way that will make people listen. She is the rare poet who looks fearlessly and closely at the terrible actions of which humans are capable, and who tenderly yet artfully tells the true stories of Adam Walsh, Amber Hagerman, Levi Frady, Maile Gilbert, Morgan Chauntel Nick, and Molly Bish, whose mother "encouraged [McLatchey] to 'keep talking about this; keep writing.'" When Edward Field chose The Lame God for the 2013 May Swenson Poetry Award, he wrote, "it takes courage to read this book...In exploring such a grief through the language of poetry, McLatchey makes things happen —she gives a voice to those too grief-stricken to speak, and she refuses to allow us to suffer in silence." This book is not for the faint-hearted, or for the "breezy reader." This book is for those 2,000 children daily reported missing, for their families, and for those moments when poetry alone can break through the grief. "But it is especially for the child who has not yet pried open a bolted door, borrowed a neighbor's phone, and announced to a 911 operator, 'I've been kidnapped and I've been missing...and I'm here.'" Marci Calabretta grew up in Ithaca, NY and is currently earning an MFA at FIU. Her work has appeared in Rainy Day, The Albion Review, and The MacGuffin. She is the co-founder and managing editor for Print Oriented Bastards and a Florida Book Review Contributing Editor. Marci Calabretta grew up in Ithaca, NY and is currently earning an MFA at FIU. Her work has appeared in Rainy Day, The Albion Review, and The MacGuffin. She is the co-founder and managing editor for Print Oriented Bastards and a Florida Book Review Contributing Editor. The original article by Marci Calabretta can be found at: http://www.floridabookreview.net/poetry.html

Index Previous Next Days Inn Everything about it says Economy: The rattan headboard; the fibrous spread catching us in its threads. The walls: thousands of sherbet-green fronds set against fading mountain ranges like sketches from the notebook of a British colonel drawn and redrawn absent mindedly then posted all around as friendly notice of distant, unattainable exotica. On the television, and perhaps part of the package: Tarzan and His Mate, 1934. The treasure hunters have, at last, dispersed. O'Sullivan and Weissmuller slip - searing and nude - into a jungle pool. So verdant and so bestial a scene that Jane's a body double. Sweet paganism, one critic called it to thrust a man and woman into love like this naive in one another's world until they kiss. Hardly the English Lord fluent in languages this Tarzan smothers upturned panting lips with a desire that covers her like moss. Part ape, Robinson Crusoe, sometimes Moses. His role, in any case, is to save Jane from herself. To teach her how to sail from vine to vine as though standing still. And when it comes to leaving, not to pale from choosing human nature over longing. God knows this kind of choice sees casualties. In Kansas City, in a single day, fifteen children fell from trees while practicing the victory cry of the great ape. In cinematic style, medics healed the noble savages with splints. And young boys cried from their sick beds, all hours, jungle-piercing calls. Noblesse oblige. Cities, of course, have burned to choruses like this. Love wants a jungle shower. . Copyright © 2002 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in Shenandoah , Winter 2003.

Amber Alert 2013 New South Writing Contest Winner “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

Index Previous Next 2012 Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up The Arrangement I. Because we were getting old enough our instructor took us to look at (not to touch) some pictures grown men drew. We tripped like new recruits through orderly rooms. Some were sternly directed to carry their shoes as we made our hushed advance. In the dim hall we could hear a classmate whimpering as she would whenever she felt too far from home. Her tears a kind of prelude to the work itself: Flowers in a Vase - more paint than flowers whose stems arched away, whose poppies bleated and sprayed yellow tears on our starched uniforms, on the perfect walls. All the way home, the yellow hung on our clothes. The bus took us sluggishly along, and we felt the road under its beefy wheels change to a luminous river of paint and the trees gave up their souls in Autumn's clay glow. II. I knew what it meant but not really. So I took the stairs two by two for you, like any other day. In my pocket, paintings on postcards, a stick of gum. In the kitchen below, Dad had grown small beside the cakes the ladies brought. He would not eat, he would not speak to relatives in the hall, and the relatives awkwardly leaning on end-tables like faded photos of themselves. Mother was proud to find me at my prayers and honoring the adults who were clearly "spent". When she pressed her head to mine, I felt her hair like fingers on my brow: a gesture she'd learned from you, mother to mother, and was teaching me now. And, this was "hard" and "each of us will have his own lament." It took all I had to steady my temple to hers - to keep my sorrow apart - as we planned the next few hours: where the aunts would sleep and who would order the flowers. . Copyright © 2006 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. 2012 Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up, Robert Frost Foundation . Judge's Review

Award Winning Poetry - 2013 Winner of the New South Writing Contest Amber Alert A white Ford, black gate, Georgia plate, squeezes into our lane. In the back, a Whitetail – tagged and slashed from her chest to hind legs – looks back at us. Her eyes a dark glass. Opening day for deer hunting. Cars pass and pass. In a field, lightning bugs darted and flashed in your hand. Half-girl, half-doe, you started and stopped, palms cupped. Someone carried you off and we cheered for the boy in the clay, his heel on home plate. It was a beautiful steal. Did he thank the deer for her head when he knelt above her? When he opened her middle to empty inedible parts? When, for a clean job, he severed her windpipe and – hunter’s nectar – he saved her heart? Copyright © 2013 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2013 New South Writing Contest. Published in new south : Georgia State University's Journal of Art & Literature , Summer 2013. Judge's Review Previous Next

Index Previous Next Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize - 2nd Place For a Dying Child Newborns in incubators in the IC Unit at Gaza’s largest hospital are dying as power fails and resources run out. – Palestinian Health Ministry, NBC News We wished for you a greenhouse gardener’s plan. His skillful hands. Seeds laid down in planting beds centuries old; a loyal water drip; roots taking hold; green tendrils taking to the gardener’s light. Stems kept alive – acacias, myrtle. An impenetrable inside. And not this grieving season. We wished for you a clear domed sky, light thermal winds to thaw your nestling trim, plump up your chalky skin. An angel to release your brittle frame from hissing tubes; smooth your two-week-old, old man’s head; anoint you with a name – before you are one of five listed: unnamed dead . And not this killing season. We wished for you ladders propped against shimmering olive trees. A long- limbed boy gingerly plucking, shaking the seeds. In a blur of boy and twigs, a laurel for your head: silver-green leaves. For certain harvest, sheets of netting below. Certain soap; certain oil, the essence of citrus, the golden-green glow. And not this hungering season. . Copyright © 2024 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Winner of the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize, second place. Published in International Human Rights Art Movement , Fall 2024. Source cited: NBC N ews

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Ezra , Spring 2019 Prev 1 Next LITTLE BY LITTLE I begin by writing at first one word only immaterial and deadly right away another then another, then another little by little a poem drinking up ravenously and madly the very poison to the flower of my mouth A POUCO E POUCO Começo por escrever primeiro uma palavra apenas mínima e fatal logo depois outra após outra, após outra a pouco e pouco poema indo beber voraz e louca o próprio veneno à flor da minha boca Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Published in Ezra , Spring 2019. Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List

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Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Springhouse , Fall 2019 Prev 6 Next ANTICIPATION I constrain myself in waiting for the poem to arrive with a beating of wings with the heart on fire in the likeness of a body the reverse of verse remorse locked away quickly and quietly hallucinating ESPERA Limito-me a esperar que o poema chegue num bater de asas no coração em fogo no jogo do corpo no reverso do verso no remorso fechado num silêncio depressa alucinado Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Published in Springhouse , Fall 2019. Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List