MERNA DYER SKINNER
POET - PHOTOGRAPHER - CONSULTANT
POETRY: PRINT & ONLINE JOURNALS
Things You May Find Hidden in My Throat After Mosab Abu Toha
1.
A bud, tight pink, a cough caught
in the windpipe of my breath, until
I break into songs of the sixties: Monday
Monday, California Dreamin,’ (I Can’t Get
No) Satisfaction—lyrics, like scratch marks
on a 45, leap from my lungs—but deep
in the sea of me, cat calls from bag boys
delivering wild strawberries, corner boys whistling
crude invitations to open my bloom.
2.
A howl lurks there too, longing
to rip loose, to be seduced,
to vibrate postponed truths—fears
shelved, discounted, craving
a buyer, an open ear. Unnamable
sensations burn as traveling fever dreams
banging the back of my larynx,
seeking an exit sign that isn’t there.
3.
Dissect my trachea, and you’ll find spiraling
traces of 8th-great-grandmother’s DNA, her voice
strangled in the loop of a rope, strung
high on Boston Common, 1660.
Three hundred years later, illnesses begin,
always in my throat—my sinew remembering
the force she felt when the boards dropped
away—voice box crushed, tongue hushed.
INSIDE RIZZOLI’S BOOKSTORE, WHEN IT WAS ONCE ON WEST 57th
My fingers trail across the cover of Mapplethorpe’s Pistils,
smooth and cool as the skin of your inner thighs.
I move along the balcony, glancing below
where you wander, disappear into the stacks.
I open a volume of Neruda, run my palm over the page
until his line—a whisper to my thirsty lips conjures your kiss,
the taste of our afternoon Ouzo still on my tongue.
Music begins to fill the quiet—Vollenweider’s languid jazz—
his fingers plucking electric harp strings—I think of your touch
along my spine when we dance. I begin to move
to the sounds of soft cymbal splashes folding
into the harp’s cascading runs, and the drummer’s
rhythmic beats against the taut skin of bongos.
You must feel it too, for here we are—you climbing the stairs,
me along the balustrade—flush from the wine, the books,
the music; my hand glides down the rail as yours slides up.
Aboard the Sea Gal, Sea Legs Wide
Dear Virgin of Remedies
SEMI-FINALIST - BLUE 29
WINTER / SPRING 2024 CONTEST
Blue 29
In Memphis, she drank whiskey
till dawn at the Blue Moon Saloon.
Danced with an indigo-blue man,
her breath bitter as bleu cheese,
her cheek’s faded bruises, faint
robin’s egg blue. When she blew
out her candles, the light in her
lapis eyes wicked away,
disappeared into the navy-blue night,
invisible as Blu-ray waves. Chilled
wind rattled an azure-stained shutter,
made her shiver, made her blue,
made her drop the needle
on Miles’ disc Kind of Blue.
She’d forgotten to make a wish.
Too late? She grabbed a box of Blue
Diamond matches, snatched a
thin sliver of hope, struck its tip,
held the shimmering blue-red flame
atop each of the twenty-nine
blackened-blue wicks, wishing,
as she often did, for a brand new
sapphire-blue, do-over life.
The Danger in Meeting Your Lover for Lunch
You’ll consent to alcohol when he orders
Ouzo—even though you’re to meet new clients
at 2. You’ll repeatedly glance from him
to the door with the rhythm of a minute-hand
ticking off time, worried someone you know
will see him holding your hand, massaging
your fingers, signaling his desire to skip
dessert. Distracted, you’ll miss him ordering
for you—a Greek salad—once again,
you’ll realize he’s forgotten how you abhor
olives—how he says nothing when you flick
them aside—how you plan to end this meal
with a whisper to his ear, Mon amor, Plus jamais,
yet knowing, he will silence your lips with his—again.
Cooling Off
Baby's Breath
Sharing A Tasting Menu
September 27, 2023 Issue
Daredevils
While Viewing the Black Marble Clock
Summer Camp
Theme Issue: Blood
Issue 24, Spring '23
Someday I Will Love Merna Louise Featured in Issue 28 - Summer / Fall 2022
Someday I Will Love Merna Louise After Susan Rich, Ocean Vuong, & Frank O'Hara
When nearsighted eyes fool her
footsteps—and tumbles turn her
early childhood days into skinned
knees and face-first falls onto sidewalks
chalked with hopscotch forms, and
scattered stones—this gangly girl,
captured for a moment, stands
beside the blue family Buick, posing
defiantly—fists on hips, ragtag dress
hitched up—curled tongue sticking out
from her frowning lips—her response
to her photographer father, whenever
he orders her to smile.
So, when does she begin to bite her tongue,
bury it deep in the well of her mouth?
Is it when she’s caught rolling up
her below-the-knee skirt to mid-thigh height
as she walks to middle school one morning?
Is her mother the first in a long queue
of adults who school her on the rules
and restrictions of good-girl dictums?
After braces and finishing school,
she walks in teen fashion shows,
learns to turn her head just so—beguilingly
tossing her hair, smiling on cue
for the photographer. To relax her
clenched fingers, he teaches her to shake
her wrists as if air-drying wet hands.
His trick works long enough for the shot.
As she walks off set, she sucks in her cheeks,
curls her tongue, tight inside her mouth—
strides like a model girl, fists swinging.
After Selling Your Lake House
Featured in Fall Issue, 2021 & 2022 Print Edition
Breakfast With My Father
Featured in Spring 2022 online& print edition
Featured inVol 6, Issue 2, Fall 2021
Rocking Chair
FEATURED WRITER FEB 27, 2021
Clocking Time
The Impermanence of Sandcastles
The Haunting of Room 125 at The Campus Inn
BEFORE GRAVITY
Remember when we skipped everywhere?
Arms moving like counterpoint melodies,
knees rising, pedaling air,
ponytails swinging, whipping our backs,
slapping our faces.
Bouncing along concrete squares
cautious to never land on a crack
(even on days we cared little for mother).
Skipping swiftly, our bodies lifting from earth,
repeating that singular sensation, that beat of a second
when we were suspended in space —
no longer rising, not yet falling.
So light, so light.
STAR 82 REVIEW
ISBN/EAN 13: 1499371276 / 9781499371277
MiPOesias
ISBN-13: 978-1499708882
MOJAVE RIVER REVIEW
HOW TO TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF A TRAFFIC TICKET IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY
And Officer, it was as if the tree reached out from the woods,
just there — do you see the slick of leaves and snapped branches?
And the rain beat down so hard the wipers wept
and my eyes stung with smoky mascara. Sir,
the mascara — it’s not supposed to run. Why does everything run?
And that pine fence blew loose, blocking my path.
And the funeral, it’s started by now, and I’m not there, sir.
Lo siento, sir. It’s getting cold. You have snow on your mustache,
sir. Yes, so easy to brush away — still, snow can smother a boy.
Lo siento, sir. My papers must be here, buried in my bag.
Do you have children, sir? Niños? You’re lucky. Perhaps
it was the mailbox I passed — with its latch undone. And I was wondering,
will the casket be open? Do they do that here? I was wondering,
will my son’s blue eyes still shimmer beneath his brittle lids?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TWO APRONS
She hangs the gingham apron loose around her neck. Frayed grosgrain ribbons edge three pockets. Sewn in her youth and stored in her hope chest, the apron hangs low over breasts heavy as breadfruit. She pulls wooden clothespins from a pocket. Bites them between her teeth. It is laundry day on the prairie. She hangs her man’s clothes — lets them stiffen on the line. An errant rooster feather clings to his shirt snapping in the wind. She plucks it off and tucks the bit of red in her pocket. She will tickle him with it later.
She pulls the butcher’s apron over her head. Wraps the ties twice around her waist. Her white sheath catches drips of red as she lifts a tray of beef scraps. It is hamburger-grinding day. She pushes twenty pounds of cow through churning metal teeth, blends it into strings of red meat. Smeared with blood by the end of her shift, she flicks errant bits of gristle from her chest, wipes the knives clean against her white thighs. She will cash her check at the corner bar — lick white foam from atop a stream of beers and kiss any man with clean nails.
CATCH AND RELEASE
Father’s thick fingers bait our hooks and cast our lines,
sending shimmying circles across the lake. When
the ripples smooth to nothing, I sigh, as if with them. I am five.
Dragonflies helicopter overhead. My line jerks with my first fish —
too small to keep. Father releases it — it’s mother-of-pearl scales glimmering in the morning light, cold body undulating deeper until it disappears.
Shrimp carapace scattered on a white plate. I am twenty-five.
The difference between the wind in my hair and the wind on the waves —
nothing more than quarks in motion here or there.
Buttery fingers wiped on white linen leave the DNA
of ancient crustaceans. On the table, a splayed lobster tail,
crab shells sucked dry and the diamond ring I’ve cast aside.
I slip from the room while this man who once seemed so alluring
takes a call. Survival is a question of instinct, moving this way
rather than that. Seeing the bait bag for what it is — a test.
NAMING AN HEIR, A PARENT
THE SQUAW VALLEY REVIEW
ISBN 9780988895331
SILVER BIRCH PRESS
"ALL ABOUT MY NAME" POETRY SERIES
SOUTHERN BOUND WHITE GIRL
Traveling slow as heat along the Dixie Highway
we pass bare bottom brown boys digging in dirt.
An old woman sits outside her one-room shack
fanning her skin, creased as dried mud.
Further on, a khaki-covered white man
sits atop a horse — rifle in hand.
Bound ankles shuffle, chains clink a dusty song
and twenty sweat-soaked black backs
bend, digging a ditch already dug. Across the field
a bright Georgia road sign promises
Peaches Grits Biscuits Just Ahead
____________
White Only Colored
I am six — sunburned pink
I follow the arrow for Colored
SILVER BIRCH PRESS "ME AS A CHILD" POETRY SERIES
FOLLOW ME
© 2022 Merna Dyer Skinner