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Index Previous Next The Breakfast Piece Web of unturned matter smoldering in the yard. A flame in the compost or a molten tongue that starts the dog barking. Abortus tranquillus. Every day now: a before or an after . Or, an endless encore. Born in a long hall under a burnishing moon. Go to your room. Go to your room and stay there. Look at your tongue: tiger stripes up and down – Bearer of sorrow, curl up your muddy locks and worm away. I’m not the one to teach you how to walk. I have been mopping up after you all these days. II. Milk crusting in a cereal bowl. Figs like little death’s- heads left, predictably, untouched. A paper cup berthed in its own spilt pool. A still life of the widespread type – The Breakfast Piece – that, in their rush to school, the boys lightly abandoned. Remnants of a meal or of a life? In all of our formal studies, always the latter. Pieces unexpectedly arranged and surfacing like orphans wanting care. We move as if across an oily canvas to wash them, wash them. . Copyright © 2015 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Drunken Boat , Fall 2015.

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.

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.

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Metamorphoses, 2019 Prev 10 Next FURTIVE STEPS I feel its traces furtive in the hollow of my hand gaining sudden strangeness luminosities, ravings of my lost senses arresting my heart descending to the bottom by the arm’s attrition until it reaches the slim wrist It is poetry arriving taking form and voice saying what I do not say TRAÇOS FURTIVOS Sinto-lhe os traços furtivos no côncavo da minha mão ganhando estranhezas súbitas agudezas, desvarios dos meus sentidos perdidos a prender-me o coração a descer até ao fundo pela rasura do braço até chegar ao desvão na delgadeza do pulso É a poesia que chega tomando forma e ruído a falar o que eu não digo Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Published in Metamorphoses , Fall 2019. Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Forthcoming in Inventory , 2020 Prev 14 Next MY SUSTENANCE The more I write poetry the more I surrender to the loss the more I lose myself the more I find myself I catch a glimpse and despise and discount myself The more I write poetry the more I become enlightened to turn it into my body to summon it in time making it my sustenance MEU ALIMENTO Quanto mais escrevo poesia mais me entrego ao perdimento mais me perco e mais me encontro me desencontro e vislumbro me desacato e desvendo Quanto mais escrevo poesia mais me torno alumbramento a transformá-la em meu corpo a convocá-la no tempo tornando-a meu alimento 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 The Missouri Review - Poem of the Week Full Disclosure World History. What the course title means: Whisperings in Xylography. Gambles and losses—like yearnings in braille— You will be asked to finger, sound out, unveil. No summit, no Zenith, no Alignment of planets guaranteed. Nothing in stone. You are Buying a home someone died in: Curie, Copernicus, El Cid. Chronicles disinterred: The wisdom of the renegade, the rebel kid. Days passed in a Provost’s calendar will be proof you endured. Endurance as in epic songs. Longings, self-makings, upendings. Finishings like beginnings, underdog odds. The heretic, the face of God. . Copyright © 2024 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Missouri Review , January 2025. Featured as Poem of the Week , Januarey 13, 2025.

Index Previous Next Arcadia Hear the songs you crave. You shall have your songs, she another kind of reward. ― Virgil, Eclogue VI The city is sleeping in. Their breaths rise and part. Here at my desk and on a kind of wing, I slip into a dream that you seem to deliver: hips lifting and rocking, heels digging in. O, what kind of play is this? Is it what is real and what is not? What clarity it brings about the mind's cool refusal to over-script the heart's sense of time; about the body's urge to live its life. Pulled from one place, how naturally it grafts itself onto another; how, even in the driest season, we look for yield: shocking pink blossoms from clay earth or lilies from the dry cross-weave in a chair of forgetfulness. Or, about love's need to perform what it knows -- as in Rodin's artful unfinishedness: a passionate kiss, a woman's hips turning on a mass of roughhewn marble to which lovers are always attached. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cider Press Review , Vol. 9, Spring 2008.

From the Heroic to the Classical Age Great Works of Ancient Greece by M. B. McLatchey Against a backdrop of economic strife, political unrest and relentless war with neighboring regions, the ancient Greeks give the world philosophy – a preoccupation, as Socrates says, not with simply living, but with living well. As the readings in this text will demonstrate – from the ancient epics of the Warrior Age of heroes to the teachings of the great thinkers in the Golden Age of Athens – living well for the ancient Greeks will mean answering the same question again and again: “What should we call a good life?” For introductory-level students in the Humanities, as for the most accomplished scholars, this is a question for all of us. This collection of ancient writings is intended to expose students to the original voices of the past in “primary source” form. Unlike the historian who summarizes Aristotle’s “Ethics of Happiness”, the primary sources herein give us Aristotle himself – his exact words as they appeared when he etched them into papyrus in the 4th century BC. Because a reading proficiency in the ancient languages is not expected of undergraduate students in the Humanities, the ancient texts translated into English here have been carefully chosen by the author based on their affinity to the original text and their adherence to the true spirit of primary source translation. Available on Amazon Book Details: Paperback: 182 pages Publisher: CreateSpace; 3rd edition (May 26, 2020) Language: English ISBN-13: 978-1724212344 Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.4 x 10 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pound

Published Poems Title Journal Year Award 1-800-THE-LOST American Poetry Journal 2012 2011 American Poet Prize - Winner A Drink of Water The Banyan Review 2023 A Glass of Absinthe Anthology of New England Writers 2005 A Kenning American Poetry Journal 2005 Academic Calendar The Soliloquist Journal 2025 Aftercare Raintown Review 2021 Afterlives Pensive: A Global Journal... 2020 Featured in Verse Daily - 2024 Against Elegies National Poetry Review 2004 Featured in Verse Daily Amber Alert new south: Georgia St. Univ. Journal 2013 New South Writing Contest - Winner Another Inevitable Romance at Olduvai Gorge Avatar Review 2021 Anthem Harpur Palate 2018 Arcadia Cider Press Review 2008 At the Grieving Parents Meeting River Styx 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award - Semi Finalist Aubade DMQ Review 2006 Bad Apology SWWIM 2017 Narrative Poetry Contest Semi Finalist; also featured in March 2020 #Tbt Balcony House Tampa Review 2023 Before the Common Era Quadrant 2021 Beginner's Mind Williams College Archives 1978 From the book "Advantages of Believing" Bingo Night for Missing and Exploited Children Beacon Press 2020 Blue Room Collective - "Grabbed Anthology" Calendar Plans Relief 2022 Catharsis Smartish Pace 2012 Erskine J. Poetry Prize - Finalist Ctrl+Z Florida Review 2021 Cues National Poetry Review 2020 Days Inn Shenandoah 2003 Dream Song Teach. Write. 2025 Emperical God Ruminate Magazine 2015 Ethos, Logos, Pathos Azure 2025 Lazuli Literary Group - First Place For a Dying Child International Human Rights Art Movement 2024 Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize - 2nd Place Full Disclosure The Missouri Review 2025 Poem of the Week Girl at Piano Beauty/Truth: Ekphrastic Poetry 2006 Grading on a Curve Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2025 House on Fire New Formalist 2008 Illuminator Porcupine Literary 2025 Inventory Southern Poetry Review 2022 Invocation Cider Press Review 2021 Invocation Before a Day of Teaching Crab Orchard Review 2024 Is there a Final Exam? Azure 2025 Lazuli Literary Group - First Place Last Lecture Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2025 Learning the Scriptures Naugatuck River Review 2018 Leaving the Mainland American Poetry Journal 2005 Melville's Reader Spoon River Poetry Review 2008 Morning in Three Movements The Banyan Review 2023 Museum Comstock Review 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit Oaths, Curses, Blessings Georgetown Review 2008 Ocracoke Briar Cliff Review 2016 Odalisque Comstock Review 2006 Muriel Craft Bailey Award - Finalist Ode for Amy Smithsonian Arts&Sciences 2019 Ode for My Department Chair Who Left a Face Shield on My Desk NCTE English Journal 2021 Ode for an Absent Student Naugatuck River Review 2020 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist Ode for an Ode on a Grecian Urn Folio 2019 2019 Folio Editor's Prize - Winner Ode to the Heart Of Poets & Poetry, FSPA 2020 On Folding a Fitted Sheet Harpur Palate 2018 On Forgetting Ash Wednesday Iris Literary Journal 2021 On Recognizing Saints National Poetry Review 2005 Annie Finch Prize - Winner On Rewinding Emerson College Review 1975 Emerson Original Poetry Award - Winner Palinode Neologism Poetry Journal 2025 Parousia Tar River Poetry 2016 Plan B Azure 2025 Lazuli Literary Group - First Place Pop Quiz Sky Island Journal 2024 Portable Labyrinth Aurorean 2014 Prometheus's Regret Halcyone, Black Mountain Press 2020 Rate My Professor: A Rebuttal Sky Island Journal 2023 Sanriku Willow Springs 2006 Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award - Winner Smiling at the Executioner Sky Island Journal 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020; Best of the Net Nominee 2021 Snow Globe Cider Press Review 2008 Sugaring Naugatuck River Review 2016 Robert Frost Award - Finalist Synonym for Marriage The Banyan Review 2023 Teaching the Tragedies Southern Poetry Review 2003 The Arrangement Beauty/Truth: Ekphrastic Poetry 2012 Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up The Bath Naugatuck River Review 2014 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist The Breakfast Piece Drunken Boat 2015 The End of Knowing The Criterion 2021 The Lame God Spoon River Poetry Review 2008 The Peculiar Truth Grain 1985 The Rape of Chryssipus Spoon River Poetry Review 2007 Spoon River Editors' Prize - Winner The Rescue Comstock Review 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit The Retrieval Comstock Review 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit The Shadow Maker Sequestrum 2022 The Wisdom of the Cave SWWIM 2022 Trigger Warning Harpur Palate 2018 Trojan Horse The Common 2025 Urban Helicon Cold Mountain Review 2016 War in Eurasia Sequestrum 2022 Washday Ekphrasis 2006 We leave the beaches for the tourists, mostly Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2019 Where Winter Spends the Summer SWWIM 2019 Sort by Year * forthcoming

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

Advantages of Believing by M. B. McLatchey 2014 FLP Open Chapbook Prize Winner - Finishing Line Press Publisher: Finishing Line Press M. B. has a real sense of the exuberance and playfulness of language … .This is not to deny the essential seriousness of some of her poems, but to praise them first as poetry, as investigations in the medium. – Lawrence Raab, author of The History of Forgetting The verses in this collection chronicle an earlier time in the author’s life as well as an earlier – and in some ways, foundational – poetic. A poetic, as E.E. Cummings suggests, that is more a way of seeing things than saying things. While the settings for the poems shift between continents – America, England, and France – the perspective, the way of seeing things, is undeniably that of the foreigner, the tourist, the disoriented – and yet somehow stewarded – young scholar. Whatever merit the poems present reflects the good guidance of the author’s former teacher and poet, Lawrence Raab. Published here for the first time as part of the Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition, these poems hold true to Yeats’ observation that a poet’s life is measured out, inevitably, in verses. – M. B. Cover art: Isis Olivier http://isisolivier.com

Index Previous Next First Place - Lazuli Literary Group Ethos, Logos, Pathos Ethos Because we are different from our dogs that leave their scent on white fence posts; the raised hind leg, the pioneering boast. Because we stand upright, wonder at vaulted ceilings, songs in frescoes: A lifeless man sculpted in plaster and paint, lifting his flaccid hand to – what? An animating touch, a spark, self-understanding? Or a patriarch called to brave a flood, reclining like a Roman river god, not from too much wine, but from such a familiar forgetfulness of our limited time. Because we build pyramids with steps: discernment following the climb. Logos Because Athens never really fell. A radiant vase unearthed; centuries of burnt clay covering its storied face: a ring of epic battles – centaurs, half-man half-beast at the throat of a cool- headed Greek. The choice still the same: Nature untamed or the compass calibrated? The watchful peeling back to the urn’s Attic shape – not with landscape trenchers, but dental picks. Precision tools. A slow-moving, pointing trowel, a sieve. Because of the mindful coupling of powdery pieces: specs of gold from a goddess’s shield, a warrior’s bones too brittle to touch. The true story so reliant upon a delicate brush. Pathos Because the healer is the wounded one. Chiron, casualty of friendly fire, Heracles’s poisonous arrow: Sentenced, in his immortal state to a life of unfathomable sorrow – A perfect medic for the would-be hero: Jason, adrift at sea, until a centaur more adrift steels him: Push on, pass up the Sirens, regain a stolen throne . Asclepius, protégé, healer celebrity, and yet so alone – except for the healer more alone: Chin up, the physician’s heart cannot be helped; tend to your soul . Achilles, fed innards of boars to awaken a warrior core; to quiet his ego: bear marrow. Because for the life worth remembering the cure is an errant arrow. . 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: "Plan B" 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