Lisa Marie Basile

Rahway River
 
It is a tomb,
my mother standing    a siren
pulling husks from the current.
 
She is the medium between
life and          this life,
her body
less a woman
more the placenta
of a dead hometown.
 
To me she is the old mare
who runs at night.
 
Somewhere folded in half
two linen wings of a crane
inside her, a body
run down by water.
 
She is ankle-in,
            a human wandering its wreckage
as the cemetery stones
hatch in the river
after storms.
 
She is the old verse
amnesiacs still recite.
 
A coffin slid down
and opened
and my mother had to bury it again.
 
 
 
 
Lisa Marie Basile is a Brooklyn-based poet and writer. She’s the author of the forthcoming A Decent Voodoo, (Červená Barva Press, 2012) and a chapbook, Diorama (Wisp Press). The Poetry Society of New York will release her chapbook, Andalusia, on Brothel Books. She is the founding editor and publisher of Patasola Press and currently reads poetry for Weave Magazine. She performs with the Poetry Brothel as Luna Liprari and is an M.F.A. candidate at The New School. She is a member of the Poetry Society of New York.
 
 
 
 
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