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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.

Award Winning Poetry - 2006 Muriel Craft Bailey Award - Finalist Odalisque Early light, the chill of souls leaving. You draw up the sheet to cover us; the soft of musk, the body's heat from an air pocket, nudged and wayward. The scent of fading bleach. I give you the curl of my back, a nonevent. Yet, all of it art. Ingres and Ingres' Odalisque who drapes a velvet curtain's jeweled sash across her calf; whose hips turn in a wash of Turkish hues. A French settee or this bed: staging we need to fuel our natural lives. To feel the body lift to the extension of a kiss. The temporal shift in calling souls home -- stomach, thighs -- like this. A quickening in canvas or stone: my open mouth and your inarticulate moan. Copyright © 2006 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award Finalist. Published in The Comstock Review , Fall/Winter 2006. Previous Next

Award Winning Poetry - 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award The Retrieval Here again. The way you used to wake us – rouse us with that impatient stare. A stubborn, boy-crazy, eighth-grader you make the same requests. We say them with you. Isn't this what happens when some of us bring water to the dead? This private shift to living only sometimes with the living. Eight months among the missing and you come padding back in your white socks and jeans; specter of grief we locked away before it made us more dry-mouthed and speechless than our counterparts in dreams. Grief like light encounters in a half-sleep: your moist face in a morning mirror. Are you in someone else's too? O, city of mirrors. And how, each night you casually resume at every threshold to every listing room that awkward lean -- the one you would do when you could not ask, but knew that we could help. Your bony shoulder barely touching the wall; your right foot crossing the other. So much the pose of one who is neither coming nor going. It's difficult to know why we should wake. Still, every day we rise like guardians ex officio, like gate-keepers to a city of passing shades -- each one a new acquaintance with your face. Each one a new petition for deliverance of the innocent and quaking. Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award Special Merit. Published in The Comstock Review , January 2008. Previous Next

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Alchemy , 2020 Prev 16 Next THE CONDITION OF THE VERSES I am of the condition of the verses with eagerness rescued I have a pact with the angels I recognize the trace of light I want the rigor of words I sing the flame of poetry in the most bitter extravagance I write the excess with the pain of the blaze in the desire to be the splendor And if in each poem I invent flight with my poetic voice I choose lava DA CONDIÇÃO DOS VERSOS Sou da condição dos versos com avidez resgatada Tenho um trato com os anjos conheço o traço da luz quero o rigor das palavras Canto a chama da poesia na desmesura mais amarga Escrevo o excesso com a pena do fulgor no desejo de ser o esplendor E se em cada poema invento o voo com a minha voz poética eu escolho a lava Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey & Edite Cunha, with permission. All rights reserved. Published in Alchemy , Issue 17, Summer 2020 Copyright © 2017 Maria Teresa Horta, from her collection Poesis . Dom Quixote Publisher, Lisbon. Back to List

Index Previous Next First Place - Lazuli Literary Group 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. Other poems in collection: "Ethos, Logos, Pathos" 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

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Award Winning Poetry - 2019 Winner of the Folio Editor's Prize Ode for an Ode on a Grecian Urn Ode, let your sorrows go. Let brides be ravished, trees forsake their leaves, let lovers kiss and fade, daughters age. Let loss be the elixir that induces a new legend, new urn-dream: Forests that seed, mature, starve, and reseed without our overtures. Let wanting, waiting, pacing be the rings in carbon dating. A new museum piece. Imagine yearning bigger than an urn, bigger than god; desire out of bounds, desire crowned. Paint it fulfilled, the turning back of hounds. What good is song if not the end of one man’s wish, what-ifs? I died at twenty-five. So many do. Urn, make your story new: Beauty is truth when sung to a priest’s staccato voice and tone near a young marine’s too-heavy, too mature, burial stone; when love betrayed makes lovers stutter phrases – sweet clichés – that they used to say alone. Put it in stone: Beauty is truth when sung to the beat of a child’s quiet feet leaving home; when aging lovers sing to one another: Remember when we used to rock in one another’s arms and we knew god and the devil’s charms? Copyright © 2019 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Winner of the 2019 Folio annual Editor's Prize for Poetry . Published in Folio Volume 34, May 2019. Previous Next