Sandra Marchetti
Sur l’herbe
You miss it, craning
away from verdancy.
Pause in this place
while I glaze you;
my head tilts
a direction you can’t read.
Green leaves drape
a frame of velvet.
Don’t move:
you can’t see
you are a strange
portrait.
Like Manet,
I strain each stroke
of cup and nape
to show I can,
then muddle you
toward the boughs to sway
in wilderness already named.
Sandra Marchetti teaches writing and literature outside of her native Chicago. Her debut full-length collection of poetry, Confluence, is forthcoming in Gold Wake Press’ 2014 Print Series and her volume, The Canopy, won Midwest Writing Center’s 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. She was also a finalist for Gulf Coast’s 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, The Journal, Nashville Review, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Stone Highway Review, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, and elsewhere. She received a residency fellowship to attend Vermont Studio Center in the summer of 2013. You can find her at sandrapoetry.net
Return to January 2014 Edition
You miss it, craning
away from verdancy.
Pause in this place
while I glaze you;
my head tilts
a direction you can’t read.
Green leaves drape
a frame of velvet.
Don’t move:
you can’t see
you are a strange
portrait.
Like Manet,
I strain each stroke
of cup and nape
to show I can,
then muddle you
toward the boughs to sway
in wilderness already named.
Sandra Marchetti teaches writing and literature outside of her native Chicago. Her debut full-length collection of poetry, Confluence, is forthcoming in Gold Wake Press’ 2014 Print Series and her volume, The Canopy, won Midwest Writing Center’s 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. She was also a finalist for Gulf Coast’s 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, The Journal, Nashville Review, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Stone Highway Review, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, and elsewhere. She received a residency fellowship to attend Vermont Studio Center in the summer of 2013. You can find her at sandrapoetry.net
Return to January 2014 Edition