Thrush Poetry Journal
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Marty McConnell

The Gift

Maybe it was the part in Runaway Bunny
where the mother rabbit grows wings
and becomes part bird to find her offspring

that grew in me a certainty that the disappeared
would always come back, made necessary
or possible the afternoons and overnights

and mornings alone with the bookshelf
and bathtub, not even a cat or plant 
for living company. So the day I came home

heel-sore and lipsticked to find the apartment 
immaculate, air conditioners pulled 
from the October windows, the heavy 

coffee table reassembled, and her
gone, what I remembered was less 
all the nights my mother sat up 

unconvincing a fever or coaxing 
my lungs into taking air and more 
the first time she wanted me 

to hit her – we were naked, 
of course – and how I was sure
she’d said it out loud, sure 

she’d asked me to do it, until
afterward when she said thank you 
and how did you know and I said

babe, I don’t know 
and we stayed there for hours 
wondering silently about winter.




Marty McConnell
lives in Chicago, and received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has recently appeared in A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry; Gulf Coast; Indiana Review; Crab Orchard; Salt Hill Review; Beloit Poetry Journal and is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2014. Her first full-length collection, “wine for a shotgun,” was published in 2012 by EM Press. www.martyoutloud.com




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