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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.

The Lame God Foreword by Edward Field Let me warn the reader: It takes courage to read this book. This heartbreaking sequence of poems on the abduction of a daughter hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had to put it aside several times. But what courage it took to write it! Though there are many poems on grief, and even on crime—websites are devoted to them—I have never come across a book of poetry like this before. I hesitate to mention a popular genre like “true crime” in relation to the high art of poetry, but The Lame God like that genre speaks with such power, because its subject matter is so unspeakable. While M.B. McLatchey’s lyricism here seems indifferent to narrative, and this collection recoils from the piecemeal reportage of the crime novel, each poem in the sequence draws us closer to the scene of the crime. What we are not told only enlarges the horror – and the pathos. With its controlled language and emotional restraint, I’m reminded of my acting teacher who used to say, “Actor weeps, audience sleeps. Actor withholds tears, audience weeps.” This book proves it. Striking about the style is its dead seriousness. The tragedy explored here has grounded the author in such a profound, such a justified, seriousness that there is no room for anything else—no playfulness, no witticism—no relief, except in the cathartic release of poetry. In fact, it seems a heroic act—an act of survival—that she has sculpted these poems so austerely, and so appropriately like a Classical urn. I was surprised to find Classical references in poetry again, after they had disappeared for the past half-century, but they work! For in the violence of the ancient Greek myths, McLatchey finds an appropriate landscape of metaphor. May Swenson, in her poem “Snow in New York”, spoke of the power and magic of words. Dealing with my own sorrows and terrors, I have always felt poetry to be a healing art, and it has helped me through my worst times. Indeed, the Inuit taught that the right words actually make things happen (in spite of W.H. Auden’s dictum that they don’t). Like a survivor of other horrors, one can never be reconciled to such a monstrous event as this book reveals. Nor does religion help much. Yet, 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. It is a hard fact that, to the artist, everything is material. We grit our teeth and use even the most personal catastrophes—our own and those of others—to make art. This is what the Classical authors did, and this is what M.B. McLatchey has done with her great subject in this book. The effect is powerful, and ultimately, The Lame God proves that if our traumatic experiences don’t destroy us, they can produce masterful works, in which human nature rises to its heights. Edward Field 2013 Preface by M.B. McLatchey In his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth insists that the poet’s subject need not come from personal experience, but it must become personal experience. In committing to a regimen of repeated witness in the world, the poet’s very impulses and habits of mind are transformed until, over time, the poet’s work becomes the poet’s life. When parents lose a child to an abduction and murder and then descend into a well of grief, the poet writes as a way to call to them until it becomes clear that she must descend into the well herself—to know the water level there, the damp walls, the underbelly of this abomination. The poems in this collection are “well poems”—conceived and drafted in a pit of loss and rage, with its shadowy promise of redemption. The story that this book tells is true. No names have been changed to protect the innocent—the innocent have already seen the face of evil, smelled its breath, learned its customs. This book is offered in memory of Molly Bish and in homage to her mother, Maggie Bish, who encouraged me to “keep talking about this; keep writing.” It is also for Adam Walsh, Amber Hagerman, Levi Frady, Maile Gilbert, and Morgan Chauntel Nick. It is for the roughly 2,000 Mollys and Adams and Ambers and Levis and Morgans that are reported missing daily to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; it is for Deb Cucanich and for the tireless case-workers at the Department of Children and Families. This book is for three girls held captive and abused for a decade in a house in an American city—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.” M.B. McLatchey 2013

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We have been together in Buddha’s gentle rain for days. Our robes are soaked through. I try not to long for things as your palm unwinds under my chin. You speak to me in the simplest language, Have a cup of tea. I sense your compassion but my ears are filled with water and the incense unnerves me. You cup my ears and whisper, Rozan is famous for its misty, rainy days, and, The sky is always the sky. I believe you, though I am not surprised. Perhaps the exchange should not be this intimate. The shadows near my eyes and across your shaved head make us tired and ordinary. You are an old man with dry lips. Perhaps your middle sags as you smooth my hair, my hair that was just so. Copyright © 1978 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in the author's chapbook Advantages of Believing , 2015. Author's website: www.mbmclatchey.com Beginner's Mind

Hestia, protector of missing children, you with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house -- draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song. ― Ancient Greek prayer. Award Winning Poetry - 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit Museum Hestia, protector of missing children, you with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house -- draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song. ― Ancient Greek prayer. Historical pieces, these things of yours: a deflating ball, a bike not on its kick, but propped against a garage wall; a crestfallen lacrosse stick. Tours have come through as if walking the way of the cross: neighbors with pasta, a friend to awkwardly drop off a borrowed dress. Police with their pens and pads making calculations. A press release for the missing, accosted kidnapped, or dead; your photo, a ghost of a soul you had. Musee de Beaux Arts for the ambushed, the dispossessed, for guardians, who did not guard our watch, conservators of hellish thoughts, thoughts too wretched for talk. Prayers in place of a fight we would have fought had you called out. But what, after all, can our prayers do except repeat prayers from the past, and that surely God knew. Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008. Previous Next

Primary Sources Great Works of Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and Middle Ages by M. B. McLatchey As a supplement to the wide variety of textbooks that students use in their Humanities courses, this collection of primary sources exposes readers to the original voices of the past. Primary Sources is a compilation of the most representative works from the Ancient Period through the Middle Ages, with annotations and introductions throughout to assist the reader. Significant readings from the modern era are also included to encourage the student to examine connections between ancient and modern ideas as well as discover the larger social and political questions that have defined Western civilization. Available on Amazon Book Details: Paperback: 282 pages Publisher: Independently published (July 10, 2012) Language: English ISBN-13: 979-8632406376 ASIN: B088BBNZVQ Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.6 x 10 inches Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds

Index Previous Next Calendar Plans For Geoffrey In the living room, a standoff – a deadlock between right and wrong side of the law. A boy bellies forward, holster and chaps, motions invisible troops; his silver gun drawn, waving in the morning sun as if to cut a map through ranges unknown: cushions from a worn sofa, sheer cliffs that fold, collapse, take their toll; his brother content in a sheriff’s badge removable for a change of roles. How our memories tell us what we cannot know. How in retrospect, days and months, our calendar plans were a grace. How stars on straw costume cowboy hats return like figures of forgotten clashes, traces of a shimmering now: a new uniform, new boots, new hat, new vows; occasion for the saints to be called by name. St. Michael, patron of the airborne, stay with my boy tonight, tomorrow, all the days. Know the two disparate tones beneath a skein of geese – their flight so fixed, resolved – when a mother prays, and when a mother calls. . Copyright © 2022 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Relief , Spring 2022.

Atlantic Center for the Arts An Interview with M.B. McLatchey In her newly appointed role as Arts & Wellness ambassador for the Atlantic Center for the Arts, M.B. was asked to comment on her work, the arts, the community, and her new role with ACA. What do you most love about your work combining health and the arts? For me, creating art has always been a way to care for the heart and mind. Working as an Ambassador for ACA, where we consciously join arts initiatives with an interest in healing, has been some of the most rewarding work in the arts that I have ever done. What inspired you to pursue this field? I think art makes us more human – or at least it reminds us of our humanness. Emily Dickinson once said that she writes poems in order to know what time it is. Making art is a wonderful way for us to value the minutes and days in our lives. How have the arts been transformational in your life? Wonderful shifts in ways of seeing – in ways of being -- have occurred for me through my teaching and through my interacting with other poets in New Smyrna Beach and in Volusia County. What’s special about the people of Volusia County or New Smyrna Beach? People who live in our county – especially artists – truly love our surroundings. The flora and sounds of our county frequently color the poems that people produce in my workshops. There’s a wonderful rhythm that we all march to here – it’s a pace and beat that shows up in our poems and visual art. What is the most rewarding part of your work with ACA? The people whom I have had the chance to come to know and love has been the most rewarding part of my work with ACA. So many talented and generous artists make up the community called “ACA”. I have felt very blessed to have been welcomed into this community. 3/28/2019

Index Previous Next Ode to the Heart In Memory of Fallen Eagle, Zachary Capra, ERAU 2018 * Heart, do what you do at times like this when all that Daedalus had warned comes true and Icarus goes tumbling to the sea. Plump up your strong defenses against parallels with myths and let a waxed wing disappear, and let his angels sing. * Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) trains hundreds of student pilots each year. A “Fallen Eagle” refers to one who tragically dies in an aircraft accident. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Of Poets & Poetry , 2020, a publication of The Florida State Poets Association.

Index Previous Next On Folding a Fitted Sheet One eye looks within, the other eye looks without. ― Henri Cartier-Bresson The art, it seems, is in the ease of mirroring what is measured: at once attending to, surrendering to a set of numbers, a fixed but – when you release too tight a grip – supple and scented plane. Tuck the puckered edges back. Give it a thwack. Let it balloon – a goddess-smelted bloom of what remains after ablution: smoke-colored shadows, the stir of a post-coital myrrh. Hold as one holds a picture you would hang or, as in Prokofiev’s ballet: arms bent and raised, palms open-faced. Fold it until the edges meet – repeat, repeat. Walk it upstairs with the reverence you’d have for carrying your country’s flag. . Copyright © 2018 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Harpur Palate of Binghamton University, Fall 2018, Vol. 18.1.