by Lena Gurr
For the next few days, at least, MQR is featuring my poem, "Ultima Thule," on their website. It's a great honor to have my work featured in this prestigious journal and equally thrilling for my poem to appear on the Michigan Quarterly Review home page.
Here is the beginning of my poem, "Ultima Thule:"
In this dark moment, the largeness
of which I’d like to deny, we settle
arguments with silence, we divide the terra-cotta
soldiers one eyeball at a time. Nothing says good-bye
like these derelict bodies, the war-torn terraces
of fatigues, the fireproof boots now abandoned.
It wasn’t enough protection, not nearly enough dirt
to disguise decade-long disagreements. On the doorstep
I keep a broken light bulb to remind me of you. Room
for all the almosts and never to bes. Like Miss Drew,
I play private eye, returning to pissed-on alleys and no-frills
bars that serve only laughing water and moonlight,
not necessarily in that order. Sometimes I watch you
stumble like a ghost husband along the dance floor
(to continue reading click here)
