PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Marge Saiser

PoetryMagazine.com

Marge Saiser
USA

Marjorie Saiser has five books of poetry, most recently Rooms (Pudding House Publications, 2010) and Beside You At The Stoplight (The Backwaters Press, 2010). Her credits include the Little Blue Stem Award and the Leo Love Award. She has published poems in Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, Zone 3, CrazyHorse, Crab Orchard Review, Smartish Pace, and Cream City Review. Her website is http://www.poetmarge.com

How Shall the Heart?

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

Stanley Kunitz

I walked the floors of universities,
wrinkles deepening over my knucklebones,
one long hair after another falling to lie
on the shoulders of my shirts. When I look behind
at the milestone parties, white wine catching light,
late-night conversation face to face,
crackers and cheese on a paper plate,
reason and rebuttal over which I hovered,
when I see how we ate and drank words, see us
small and earnest at the wrong end of a spyglass,
I long for more of that music.
Talk to me; bring me ideas:
curled pink shrimp and a dish of red sauce.

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Credit: These poems are from Beside You At The Stoplight