Melissa holds a Master of the Arts in English Literature
from Northern Illinois University where she specialized 
in British Romantic poetry.  She has taught composition 
to college students, creative writing to children, and ESL 
to business people in Costa Rica.  She is currently working on 
a collection of character sketches drawing from experiences 
in hotels and hospitals and writing a novel about volatile 
relationships between young adults in their  
early 20s.  Her poem "Starting" was published in the 2004 
Fall Edition of "Towers" Literary Magazine and won 
honorable mention.  Melissa lives in Batavia, 
IL where she juggles two jobs and takes the dog for long walks.    

Watchtower

From the height of having tucked my love away
I can trace the shadow of its spreading from my hands to hours

My heart is stretched to points like cardinal directions
shooting burning arrows to chase after the horses of their last words

My fingers gallop through their work while I dream
of what a hard day is all over:

the pressure of fingernails on clay
the skillful pinching of seeds away from the whole
sucking juice from buried fruit to concentrate

Play is in the fever of thoughts resounding from the fields
with hands deep in rows of what is planted, or echoes
of what might grow next year tapping at the office blinds

We have learned to sift ourselves away from what we're drawn to--
our loves, our families, a lazy day full of a little trouble,
making the natural sinful, like scoffing at two teenage boys
muddy from the river, bellies full of beer and bread
where is the school? the factory? the plastic building stripped of ivy?
instead of laughing to witness the kerosene of their virile sunshine

I rub between the hard points of my fingers a crinkling joy
that is the paper of my actions, a small token
to buy you food from someone else's yard
when I would tend to the tomatoes enough to cluck
over the small steps of their sprouting a scarecrow of a secret,
to know my love would feed you

Slowing the lightness of this simple plan
I fold the creases of my bills and count them out
like notches marking days, pennies as the seconds
of the lesson I must swallow:

sometimes love is keeping your mind from bending over love

My love in spring (Ophelia)

My love in spring melts like the sweetness of old mud
in the mouth of a bitter sky
at the season's memory swelling, and then the wind of its leaving
grazing my shoulder tenderly to turn my head out
for ten plump robbins playing near the compost pile
threading the new energy of the year from the salvages of what has ended
with minds trained to savor life in bits

This is the frame of late afternoon holding the first morning
after last night's glass of closed windows over the sad blue of black ice
with eyes trained to take the messages of color
the heat of those grounded red bellies set ablaze by the sky's sun
sways me like rings of conflicted water
drifting slow and sacred back to shore
or beating the current like drums cropping up paper dolls from the silt
as they tred underwater, kicking at the fire of winter's last words

Slip

there is some nonsense whining in another language in me
these apricot wants of skipped autumn like nightmares of a harvest
holding the same season in the tropics with a scarecrow made of palm
a different scratch than flannel falling too heavy
ridiculous as a wrap of quilt on the hot sand
I would drag it there dripped with ceviche
sand itching sand in some creaks of me electric
transplant of a woman welting everyone with a flourish
of not afraid to get wet
my hair is new stiff straw

Copyright, Melissa McCarter.
All rights reserved by author.