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Index Previous Next Oaths, Curses, Blessings As a girl, I learned to hurl a curse so it would hurt. The skill, not in the words but in the work: bringing the self to feel another's precious losses as though they were one's own. And then, like an informer against the heart, delivering the blows: May you wake without air, without light. May you walk with a league of homeless shadows by your side. Although it was play it frightened me to see a hex take hold in a friend's eye, to see the crushing sorrows one can summon with the mind. Tonight, in the ashen shadows of your room those curses seem to linger like stray dogs reminding me, as the unfortunate always do, of our double lives. Our tendency to come to terms too late. Your breadth, like oatmeal's blooming scent, circles them in a breeze. Above us, light that should comfort: glow -in-the-dark stars careen like clockwork through a black sky. For a lamp: a shuttle that turns unceasingly over a dimly-lit earth. I cover you again, although this August night is still and though it's me that's shaking. With a different girl behind us, this stillness might be our grace. Instead it keeps me here tonight not praying really, but pacing. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in the Georgetown Review , Spring 2008

Index Previous Next 2012 Erskine J. Poetry Prize - Finalist Catharsis A portly man on TV says he’s eating jelly donuts since his doctor recommended more fruit. My head tucked beneath your chin, I feel you grin. A welcome joke – what Aristotle called a cleansing: the comedy channel in bed. A piecemeal purging meant to clear our minds, a chance to graft, like patchwork, the wreckage of our lives onto a campy figure, cheer for him; love him for dancing when the gods single him out, pile on their twisted trials. As if – for a few moments – we are watching someone else’s life unfold. Pizza and beer, you my armchair, tucked in our sheets. As if – for a few moments – we have climbed up from some well to lounge on sun-baked stone, take in the Dionysian Mysteries: lore of the vine – seasons, grapes, wine. Nothing ever truly dying. And us, tender initiates, laughing so hard we’re crying. . Copyright © 2011 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Finalist for the 11th Annual Erskine J. Poetry Prize . Published in the 2012 Spring issue of S martish Pace .

Award Winning Poetry - 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. Pubished in SWWIM , December 2017. Previous Next

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.

Index Previous Next Parousia A presence and this morning's shower lingering like jewels between my thighs. As if to flaunt my unpreparedness – towel for a turban; my face, a pale and open sky – I greet them at my door. Picture the scene , they ask, a harlot sitting on the back of a fearsome beast . A terrible waking-dream of a naked whore of false beliefs straddling the back of a wild boar: metaphors for the Parousia. Yet, standing on my porch, I wonder if they are attached, newlyweds perhaps, who fell in love over scripture or perhaps they present themselves like this: a final act to test my interest in the text, or in the man. Sun-bleached hair, finger-combed, his face unexpectedly tanned, the curl of his lip. I tell them to come back – a slip, or another faith talking? I say this squarely looking at him. As for ancient debts, healing, forgiving: I am going – have already gone – toward the living. . Copyright © 2015 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Tar River Poetry , Spring 2016.

Award Winning Poetry - 1974 Winner of the 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 . Previous Next

Award Winning Poetry - 2025 Winner of the Lazuli Literary Group 2024 Writing Contest - 2 of 3 - Is there a Final Exam? This was always the plan. The day and hour, of course, is out of our hands: Dickinson’s Carriage Man; Shelley’s desert sand. Imagine an untethering, a swansong reckoning. No proofs in stone. Almost certainly, you will be alone. The location, like an envelope you have been carrying, will be unsealed – a wakefulness, or a presence revealed: a man who taught you to field ground balls in the yard; devotions you fought and now whose storied part you want again. Or perhaps in a chance encounter with a schoolyard friend, a companion you abandoned for the faster track, the slap on the back. Our lives a history of what-ifs, lighthouses somehow missed. The final exam will not be timed. It will be scored blind. The final exam will leave you among the living, taking stock. Finishings all around; ashes still simmering – and a threshold to cross. Your gift if you use it, time : Gilgamesh, tunnelling trails to a city wall; Penelope’s loom and an ever- unravelling shawl. As for them, so you: there will be threshold guardians – a forest monster, suitors – reveals of the anima. Look these guardians in the eye. They are barriers to test your stamina. . 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 - First Place. Other poems in collection: "Ethos, Pathos, Logos" and "Plan B". 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 Previous Next

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Springhouse , Fall 2019 Prev 7 Next IDEALIZATION I fashion with care poetry and words life and its stories the stars and the characters I use in my life Between verses stanzas gardenias and just before dawn spinning and weaving I fashion the passion and the rose of my work IDEALIZAÇÃO Idealizo com esmero a poesia e as palavras a vida e as histórias as estrelas e as personagens usadas no meu viver Por entre versos estâncias gardénias e madrugadas a fiar e a tecer idealizo a paixão e a rosa do meu escrever 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

Index Previous Next Pop Quiz Some bow their heads and wait for their pens to move. A ground cloud, like a fog, or an unexpected tide, pulls them away. Through the haze, the quiet one half-raises her hand, asks if – after today – there will be other chances . Today’s exam, I want to tell her, is not today’s exam. It is Everyman ’s call, nothing in stone; a practice run at squaring accounts; at facing what we did not plan; at being alone; a reference to the clock on our wall, whose hands advance with us or without us. I wait for them in the dim, rapt hush. A curtain rises. Scenes – like a showreel – flicker and flash: a hand untangling from a lover’s grasp; a slap for a ranting three-year old; a prayer clasp. As if to find answers, some raise their heads, gaze at a life scene outside: A yellow-breasted blackbird on a branch, savoring a grub in its beak. Other chances . Such a sweet ring. Winter’s buried bulbs; bloom in the next growing season. . Copyright © 2023 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Sky Island Journal , Issue #27, Winter 2024. From the editors: [This poem] is vulnerable, tense, powerful, and so incredibly accurate; it transports and challenges us in ways that poems seldom do. This piece—like so many of our favorite M.B. pieces—is a meditation on the presence of absence and the absence of presence, and it bears fruit in such personal, beautiful, and unexpected ways. Like all great art, “Pop Quiz” sticks its landing and is a gift that keeps on giving; we discover more about it, and ourselves, with every reading.