| Mary Meriam |
The Woman of My Dreamsread by mary meriam At last, the hour strikes to go to sleep. She waits for me—there's no one else. Her face, at first, reflects the moon, then her embrace embroiders cloaks to hide the very deep. As I begin to fall to sleep, I reap the whole day's dreams. My sleep is wearing lace. She lullabies me to a calmer place, then fastens me with pearls and lets me weep.  © Anja Papenfuss Hot Spellread by mary meriam This sonnet holds the hope of something hot: a summer night with soft cicada din, a sultry rush of fingers on the skin, a tender lightning bolt that hits the spot. Or in the city, ripe with heat and rot, a staircase to a loft where we begin a strip-down to the hardest core within, a culture shock, the climax of the plot. This sonnet drops my hand and doesn't care that here I lie alone, again, in bed, the chilly springtime flooding me with pain. As if I need the sonnet to explain a couplet rhymes, a couplet is a pair, my sweat is rain, the heat is in my head.  © Saida Inkeri Jäntti Mary Meriam's chapbook of poems, The Countess of Flatbroke (afterword by Lillian Faderman), was published in 2006 by Modern Metrics in New York City. Her poems and essays have been published in Literary Imagination, Gay & Lesbian Review, Windy City Times, A Prairie Home Companion, Light Quarterly, and Umbrella, among others. |