Index Previous Next Morning in Three Movements I I lie in my own pasty pool like a lamb in a druid’s bed. Layer by layer, thread after thread, I shed and shed. O, press me between your palms again! Deliverer, be delivered. Without your need, without a guise to beautify, what am I? II. I know her layers far better than she. Scales that I peel in a rush of steam. My tongue, her arch, her bending knee. The soft between her legs where I redeem myself, the way the Great Throwdini did, who earned his life, her love, by sparing them. Without her bristling flesh, oh what am I? III. In this morning light, I am almost transparent, a sheet of shimmering snow that holds another person’s fears – once in this tight embrace, twice in this lingering scent, this care, this newfound air. Answers to Riddles in Reverse: I: paos fo rab II : rozar III. eussit . Copyright © 2023 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Banyan Review , Fall 2023.

Index Previous Next Washday After Grandma Moses So hard to know the subject: a meadow, dead center of oils in green? Or left of it, this hyperactive wash scene: milky-white shirts scattered on the green's mossy edge. Rows of blanched sheets fluttering from taut lines that hem the green, that keep the women with their laundry always receding. And opposite the sheets, a picket fence that seems to frame the spongy grades of green and lime and ask us to reflect on - what? Something the women and the others have quietly agreed to turn away from. Look how they crowd their way into the margins. Here, a harvest story: flecks of red gathered into baskets. Words being said between the harvesters. Words so compelling that one of them stands upright to view the other. Is he facing the painting's question? Or does he only seem to look at him because they share this tiny patch of goldenrod and green and picket fences? Easy to grant: this kind of ground that parcels out our senses. And far, far off from center, a first or last encounter: a woman stops as she exits a dark, cool shed - stops, not to adjust to the day's stark light but to feel the gaze of a man more painted than she, to feel the thrust of sepia: his suit, dabbed on like that line of aging wood outside the shed; like the sepia dresses of the women nearby; like the silo, sepia and Indian red, that hedge her in. Roads leading in, but not to the center of life. Only the large white house, the same starched white as the sheets the women hang. Windows with shades half-drawn so evenly that they have clearly been painted on. A front door shut so tight that it disappears, at times, as white will against white. The chimney (and so, the hearth) an afterthought in browns and burgundy. Is this the cache of colors then that comes with knowing one's lot? The end of looking east or west? The fertile ground fenced off? . Copyright © 2006 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Published in Ekphrasis , Fall/Winter 2006.

Index Previous Next Melville's Reader With an ease that belies his theme my boy slumps into a mold of his own small back. Chair or taffrail? The waves blend with his thoughts. And far, far out of range, I search my heart for a send off: To follow a runaway's lead? His optimism? To see our little horrors and be social with them? A summer breeze. And now the pages turn themselves; he shifts and shifts. Perhaps the helmsman stares now at the flaming try-works, sees the shapes: harpooners poling, pitching that hissing mass -- a reckoning so stark he slips into a soporific dream then suddenly comes to, but dead astern, his mind ignited wondering how to save the ship from being brought to lee. I remember reading that scene until I could recite it. But now, he lays the book like open wings across his lap and basks and basks in summer's luxurious light. I watch him like a swabber come to save a listing ship and keep a kind of vigil while he naps. Was God above young Ishmael as he packed his bag for Cape Horn, the Pacific? Or, in New Bedford, when he read the fate of whale men? An average, good-hearted, dreamer at the masthead. Watcher not watching, chatting with Queequeg. O little dreamer, never in more danger than on your sunny perch, move your foot or hand an inch, loosen your grip and midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through the transparent air into the summer sea. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in The Spoon River Poetry Review , Winter/Spring 2008.

Index Previous Next 2012 Winner of the 46er Prize for Poetry Bingo Night for Missing and Exploited Children B efore we went underground. Before you fell through a gyre with no sound. I f one piece were unwound. If you had run. If we had looked for you sooner. If you had screamed. If the gods had intervened. N ascent. Still blooming, the orchid on your window sill. A thrill of color. G one. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Phantom limb. If the soul leaves the body, we did not feel it go. Nothing and everything cloistered in stone. O mens we left for others. Ripples on a resting pond. The whistling of a breeze. The imprint on the ovaries. . Copyright © 2012 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. Winner of the 2012 Adirondack Review's 46er Prize for Poetry. Published in The Adirondack Review , Summer 2013. Original version published here . The 46er Prize refers to the forty-six major peaks of the Adirondacks. Hikers who reach all forty-six summits are deemed "Forty-sixers." Also published by Beacon Press in The Blue Room Collective's anthology, Grabbed , Summer 2020.

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Index Previous Next Snow Globe La Tour Eiffel. An April-snow like pollen covers a patch of stolid tulips. From the first platform, he leans over slick railings, leans as if in Keats’s scheme to drop and drop a red corsage to a woman below. I see it now: this is the one of 300 steel workers, who tumbled to his death clowning around. Her promise is to keep him from his fall by gazing back – his sentinel, his figurine against the filmy wash of elements against the fading colors in a dome. I shake it – not for snow – but to marvel at their hold. . Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in Cider Press Review , Vol. 9, Spring 2008.

Index Previous Next Featured in Verse Daily - 2004 Against Elegies What if we let you sing first? What if we look for you with Mallarme’s blank stare: birds round an empty dish, stony limbs? To tell the history of our grief we settle for an empty doorway and a maple leaf or a woman with neckcurls, named Jane, changed by her poetry teacher’s love to a wren wound in light. Shimmering anodyne. Elegies so resolute in wood or wings that we forget the truer measurements of unfinished things: the distance between two disappearing habits; the echo of a promise lodged in a warbler’s throat; the length of a dreamy boy swinging from his favorite limb; the ragged patch below — our ground for spotting him. If grieving is a way of working wood, building thresholds, wrapping birds — then hands will keep us tending things too near. What if this June air should circle, not fall on, our copper chimes with the passiveness of prayer? What if the breeze that would carry a bird’s perfect sorrow were to kneel at the base of an oak, and refuse to rise? . Copyright © 2004 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in National Poetry Review , Fall/Winter 2004. Featured in Verse Daily ® with permission, 2004.

Award Winning Poetry - 2012 Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up The Arrangement I. Because we were getting old enough our instructor took us to look at (not to touch) some pictures grown men drew. We tripped like new recruits through orderly rooms. Some were sternly directed to carry their shoes as we made our hushed advance. In the dim hall we could hear a classmate whimpering as she would whenever she felt too far from home. Her tears a kind of prelude to the work itself: Flowers in a Vase - more paint than flowers whose stems arched away, whose poppies bleated and sprayed yellow tears on our starched uniforms, on the perfect walls. All the way home, the yellow hung on our clothes. The bus took us sluggishly along, and we felt the road under its beefy wheels change to a luminous river of paint and the trees gave up their souls in Autumn's clay glow. II. I knew what it meant but not really. So I took the stairs two by two for you, like any other day. In my pocket, paintings on postcards, a stick of gum. In the kitchen below, Dad had grown small beside the cakes the ladies brought. He would not eat, he would not speak to relatives in the hall, and the relatives awkwardly leaning on end-tables like faded photos of themselves. Mother was proud to find me at my prayers and honoring the adults who were clearly "spent". When she pressed her head to mine, I felt her hair like fingers on my brow: a gesture she'd learned from you, mother to mother, and was teaching me now. And, this was "hard" and "each of us will have his own lament." It took all I had to steady my temple to hers - to keep my sorrow apart - as we planned the next few hours: where the aunts would sleep and who would order the flowers. Copyright © 2006 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved. 2012 Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up, Robert Frost Foundation . Judge's Review Previous Next

Published Poems Sort by Title Year Title Journal Award 2026 Palinode Neologism Poetry Journal 2025 Illuminator Porcupine Literary 2025 Grading on a Curve Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2025 Last Lecture Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2025 Plan B Azure Lazuli Literary Group - First Place 2025 Academic Calendar The Soliloquist Journal 2025 Is there a Final Exam? Azure Lazuli Literary Group - First Place 2025 Dream Song Teach. Write. 2025 Trojan Horse The Common 2025 Ethos, Logos, Pathos Azure Lazuli Literary Group - First Place 2025 Full Disclosure The Missouri Review Poem of the Week 2024 For a Dying Child International Human Rights Art Movement Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize - 2nd Place 2024 Pop Quiz Sky Island Journal 2024 Invocation Before a Day of Teaching Crab Orchard Review 2023 Rate My Professor: A Rebuttal Sky Island Journal 2023 Balcony House Tampa Review 2023 Morning in Three Movements The Banyan Review 2023 A Drink of Water The Banyan Review 2023 Synonym for Marriage The Banyan Review 2022 The Wisdom of the Cave SWWIM 2022 Inventory Southern Poetry Review 2022 The Shadow Maker Sequestrum 2022 War in Eurasia Sequestrum 2022 Calendar Plans Relief 2021 Ctrl+Z Florida Review 2021 On Forgetting Ash Wednesday Iris Literary Journal 2021 Before the Common Era Quadrant 2021 Aftercare Raintown Review 2021 Invocation Cider Press Review 2021 The End of Knowing The Criterion 2021 Another Inevitable Romance at Olduvai Gorge Avatar Review 2021 Ode for My Department Chair Who Left a Face Shield on My Desk NCTE English Journal 2020 Bingo Night for Missing and Exploited Children Beacon Press Blue Room Collective - "Grabbed Anthology" 2020 Prometheus's Regret Halcyone, Black Mountain Press 2020 Smiling at the Executioner Sky Island Journal Pushcart Prize Nominee 2020; Best of the Net Nominee 2021 2020 Ode for an Absent Student Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist 2020 Afterlives Pensive: A Global Journal... Featured in Verse Daily - 2024 2020 Cues National Poetry Review 2020 Ode to the Heart Of Poets & Poetry, FSPA 2019 We leave the beaches for the tourists, mostly Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art 2019 Ode for Amy Smithsonian Arts&Sciences 2019 Ode for an Ode on a Grecian Urn Folio 2019 Folio Editor's Prize - Winner 2019 Where Winter Spends the Summer SWWIM 2018 Anthem Harpur Palate 2018 On Folding a Fitted Sheet Harpur Palate 2018 Learning the Scriptures Naugatuck River Review 2018 Trigger Warning Harpur Palate 2017 Bad Apology SWWIM Narrative Poetry Contest Semi Finalist; also featured in March 2020 #Tbt 2016 Ocracoke Briar Cliff Review 2016 Urban Helicon Cold Mountain Review 2016 Parousia Tar River Poetry 2016 Sugaring Naugatuck River Review Robert Frost Award - Finalist 2015 The Breakfast Piece Drunken Boat 2015 Emperical God Ruminate Magazine 2014 The Bath Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi Finalist 2014 Portable Labyrinth Aurorean 2013 Amber Alert new south: Georgia St. Univ. Journal New South Writing Contest - Winner 2012 The Arrangement Beauty/Truth: Ekphrastic Poetry Robert Frost Award - First Runner Up 2012 At the Grieving Parents Meeting River Styx Rita Dove Poetry Award - Semi Finalist 2012 1-800-THE-LOST American Poetry Journal 2011 American Poet Prize - Winner 2012 Catharsis Smartish Pace Erskine J. Poetry Prize - Finalist 2008 Arcadia Cider Press Review 2008 House on Fire New Formalist 2008 Museum Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit 2008 The Rescue Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit 2008 Melville's Reader Spoon River Poetry Review 2008 The Retrieval Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit 2008 Oaths, Curses, Blessings Georgetown Review 2008 Snow Globe Cider Press Review 2008 The Lame God Spoon River Poetry Review 2007 The Rape of Chryssipus Spoon River Poetry Review Spoon River Editors' Prize - Winner 2006 Odalisque Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Award - Finalist 2006 Girl at Piano Beauty/Truth: Ekphrastic Poetry 2006 Aubade DMQ Review 2006 Washday Ekphrasis 2006 Sanriku Willow Springs Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award - Winner 2005 A Kenning American Poetry Journal 2005 On Recognizing Saints National Poetry Review Annie Finch Prize - Winner 2005 Leaving the Mainland American Poetry Journal 2005 A Glass of Absinthe Anthology of New England Writers 2004 Against Elegies National Poetry Review Featured in Verse Daily 2003 Days Inn Shenandoah 2003 Teaching the Tragedies Southern Poetry Review 1985 The Peculiar Truth Grain 1978 Beginner's Mind Williams College Archives From the book "Advantages of Believing" 1975 On Rewinding Emerson College Review Emerson Original Poetry Award - Winner

For a foster child Award Winning Poetry - 2014 Narrative Poetry Contest - Semi-Finalist The Bath For a foster child The slightest wrong move could mean tidal waves. Certain disaster to a boy with everything resting on delicate tissue – a bruised knee to which you command a corps of plastic ships – an austere but (you promise) heavenly beach where men may lie down in soft sand, a tiny fold in your thigh; write letters and find oranges to eat; plan the next battle. Hard that you know so much about these distances from home. A trumpet blast! You steam your mission out. Predictably bad weather and still another perilous gorge of falls and fleshy islands. The search resumes for citrus or, at least, friendly harbor. I wish you both -- and not another tour of calculations tossed or unchartered, and not this shadowy map on water. Copyright © 2014 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Naugatuck River Review's 6th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest Semi-Finalist. Published in Naugatuck River Review , November 2014. Previous Next

Index Previous Next 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award - Special Merit 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.

Award Winning Poetry - 2004 Featured in Verse Daily Against Elegies What if we let you sing first? What if we look for you with Mallarme’s blank stare: birds round an empty dish, stony limbs? To tell the history of our grief we settle for an empty doorway and a maple leaf or a woman with neckcurls, named Jane, changed by her poetry teacher’s love to a wren wound in light. Shimmering anodyne. Elegies so resolute in wood or wings that we forget the truer measurements of unfinished things: the distance between two disappearing habits; the echo of a promise lodged in a warbler’s throat; the length of a dreamy boy swinging from his favorite limb; the ragged patch below — our ground for spotting him. If grieving is a way of working wood, building thresholds, wrapping birds — then hands will keep us tending things too near. What if this June air should circle, not fall on, our copper chimes with the passiveness of prayer? What if the breeze that would carry a bird’s perfect sorrow were to kneel at the base of an oak, and refuse to rise? Copyright © 2004 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved. Published in National Poetry Review , Fall/Winter 2004. Featured in Verse Daily ® with permission, 2004. Previous Next