poetry on mamazine:

The Influence of Peers
by Judith Baumel

Waiting for the Lost to Come in Dreams
by Judith Baumel

Darklit
by Gwen Hutchinson

Delivery
by David B. McCoy

Distant Mountains
by David B. McCoy

One
by Elizabeth Sullivan

Running, Thinking
by Elizabeth Sullivan

Night Waking
by Elizabeth Sullivan

Once I Did Kiss Her Wetly on the Mouth
by Beth Ann Fennelly

Salvation
by Amber Flora Thomas


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POETRY

Stalk
by Kristin Berger

Her grip closes full round
the thin quill of bamboo
reaching to shoot apart
from the grove that clusters
along the riverbank – a trill of leaves
that will not shake free,
no matter how much she leans
her new, upright weight
against this green peer,
a wild wrestling
in the wet woods –

like the fresh page found
exposed on the desk, she slashes
a black ballpoint mark
across the words' unfinished face –
make poem, too, mama –

she tosses and trains
the stalk to her will,
pricks open the batted sky
to a high blue,
a remnant of rain inking
the uncleaved space
in perfect arcs –

young master, envious control.

Kristin Berger is a mother and writer living in Portland, OR. Her non-fiction has been published in Hip Mama and on mamazine.com. Her poetry has been and will be appearing in The American Poetry Journal and in the forthcoming Awards Issue of the Comstock Review as well as thepedestalmagazine.com in February. She is at work on a collection of poems entitled For the Willing.