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Index Previous Next Invocation In this bar’s suspended lights, a halo hovers over you. The tattoo that you stitched to your neck – mythic spheres, a cluster of unnamed stars, a pyramid – transforms to a sheet of muted notes, or a lusterless, untraveled map once sketched for an epic plan you had to separate, engage the three Fates, their give and take, then bring your long tale home. The bartender asks, OK? And though it means a summoning, you nod and take another fill from her tap; the glass like Waterford the way you hold it still. It takes all you have to drink from this new fountain. To feel the sickening fall of cool, fresh water against your stomach wall. To smell the souring sediment of small bites of food. Good boy, your mother must have crooned, Open wide. And she must have mirror-opened her mouth too as she spooned up solids pureed and fed them to a vision, a mother’s trust, a boy’s long view. Her mission, to nurture the god in you. I am calling her here tonight – to your stool, to this constellation of dying stars; to this yearning – yours and ours – to this well of life’s water, grit and resolution, memories; to the imprint of an infant I held close to me still altering my posture and my scaffolding. . Copyright © 2020 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cider Press Review

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.

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Index Previous Next Urban Helicon It starts like this: the clamps around my wrists. The little Saturn ring around my head, the wooden chair, the arms still warm, though dead; then the electric thrill, the arch, the twist. The expiation just before the twist, the quick reform of madam in her bed, the spasm, the welcome-wagon for something newly-wed; or the ambulance, the sirens, the sudden lisp. It makes me so serene. It ties me to a rock and sends me swimming. It causes quite a scene to feel the wood and stone become a dock; to hear the pastoral in stillness singing. . Copyright © 1982 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cold Mountain Review , Spring 2016. Listen to the author's audio version on Cold Mountain Review's website .

Index Previous Next Aubade We wake in scenes that tell us what we dreamed. Like Pilon's warm gisants, my head turned toward yours as if to close a space. Your pulse oddly restored in a sculptor's bloc. Nude and appointed to reflect a light, to make a chapel out of earth's casualties. And then, inevitable as the breath we have to take, the choice we're granted in this early hour - the brackish call of migratory waterfowl or art's stony appeal: sealed in a hall as statues of our decay doomed, yet attached in a docket of holy days. . Copyright © 2005 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in DMQ Review , Summer 2006. Original version published here .

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 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

Sky Island Journal - Reviews J ason Splichal and Jeff Sommerfeld, Founders and Co-Editors, Sky Island Journal Smiling at the Executioner, April 2020 Review Pushcar t Prize Nominee 2020 Best of the Net Nominee 2021 "Smiling at the Executioner " is the epitome of what we consider powerful poetry to be. The emotional and intellectual transport it provides is nothing short of astonishing. Vivid, palpable imagery saturates the perfect pacing of this svelte, knife-like piece. Your craft is elegant, tight, and overtly physical throughout; the ebb and flow of your restraint and revelation rewards us in ways that linger long after your poem has left our lips. Your ability to extend a metaphor tenderly and unflinchingly is a true gift. Like all great art, "Smiling at the Executioner" is a gift that keeps giving; we discover more about it, and ourselves, with every reading. Its voice spoke to us immediately, and we are beyond excited to share it with the world. Rate My Professor: A Rebuttal, November 2022 Review "Rate My Professor: A Rebuttal " spoke to us immediately. Intensely personal yet wildly accessible, it transports and challenges us in ways that poems seldom do. This powerful, vulnerable, tapestry of human landscape is a meditation on the presence of absence and the absence of presence, and it bears fruit in such beautiful and unexpected ways... The elegance of your craft, and “Rate My Professor: A Rebuttal,” are two gifts that keep on giving; we discover more about them, and ourselves, with every reading. Pop Quiz, January 2024 Review "Pop Quiz " 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.

Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta Translated by: M.B. McLatchey and Edite Cunhã Published in Springhouse , Fall 2019 Prev 4 Next POEM This is my epic wrought in poetry wounds and words without gods without battles without heroes or tears without bronze armaments Poem to poem to poem passion after radiance after grace in its truest form POEMA Esta é a minha epopeia feita de poesia perdimentos e palavras sem deuses sem batalhas sem heróis nem lágrimas sem o bronze das armas Poema a poema a poema paixão após fulgor após beleza na sua dimensão mais ávida 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

The Rape of Chryssipus 2007 Spoon River Poetry Review Editors' Prize I chose "The Rape of Chryssipus" among a remarkable field of finalists for three reasons. The poem displays both wildness and restraint, and arranges the tension between these impulses through the clean elegance of its prosody. It makes me think of Yeats's ambition to write a poem "as cold and passionate as the dawn." The poem also displays great breadth, making us feel both the particularity and the universality of the brutal acts it recounts. And finally, "The Rape of Chryssipus" recalls one of poetry's prime functions: to curse. Appalled by the occasion of the poem, I'm entranced by its ambition to transcend accusation. "The Rape of Chryssipus" is no less than a spell, calling upon elusive powers to enter the human world. -- Dr. Philip Brady, Judge 2007 Spoon River Poetry Review Editor's Prize The judge, Dr. Philip Brady , is the author of three books of poems and a memoir. He has received fellowships from Ohio and New York, and residencies at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Fundacion Valparaiso, the Headlands Center, and Ragdale. He teaches at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Poetry Center and Etruscan Press. The Spoon River Poetry Review

The Arrangement 2012 Robert Frost Award First Runner Up A poem that pays tribute to the power of art in a time of grief. The art here is a painting by an unidentified artist entitled “Flowers in a Vase.” The thick yellow paint of the petals reach down and stay with the speaker as young girl on a class outing. The yellow paint is suddenly everywhere: in the child’s starched uniforms, on the perfect walls, on the road and on the river as seen from the bus as she travels home. Was the surreal nature of the paint’s effect a sign of what would come? Or did she sense the turn of events about to happen, was she left susceptible to a visceral effect of the thick yellow paint, in a sense, the power of art? Once home, she finds family members assembled and her father in grief. A special connection is made with her mother in the form of a gesture, that of pressing foreheads to connect with another in grief, something she learned from her mother, the deceased. There is a wonderful link to the painting made in the last few lines as the family turns from grief to decide “where the visiting aunts would sleep/ and “who would order the flowers.” A deftly written lyric narrative with questions left open for the listener. --Judge, Kathleen Aponick 2012 Robert Frost Award Robert Frost Foundation