Michelle Bitting
Winter Reckoning
she said if you are new to this
we will stand at the gate
together
beckoning back light
and the yule unfolding
its shadow burning
secrets
in the portal
my brother is in there
at a table with guests
hunched over roast
rosemary and silver
he was trying to say
something to make us laugh
but his switches all froze
his lamp already caught
in the under dark
below a slippery stitch
an abandoned cart
on an iced-over road
the homemade sweater of
holidays unraveling
we neglected to catch it
loss is never learned
always new but dimmer now
in the frigid hours
where skin and bones lift off
the raw meat of memory
awake as worms
tucked in snow
it stings to touch it
time’s open basket
our merriment and
tinsel and a solstice moon
I step into
blank as a wound
as a bridge of silence
whatever drove him
it’s day for night now
there is no other way
she said
at the gate of winter
I have seen birth
and death I said
I thought
they were different
Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2023 CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize and 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize. She is the author of five poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and recently named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist is forthcoming in 2024. Bitting holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Mythological Studies, emphasis Poetry and Psychology. She is writing a novel that centers around Los Angeles and her great grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.
Return to May 2024 Edition
she said if you are new to this
we will stand at the gate
together
beckoning back light
and the yule unfolding
its shadow burning
secrets
in the portal
my brother is in there
at a table with guests
hunched over roast
rosemary and silver
he was trying to say
something to make us laugh
but his switches all froze
his lamp already caught
in the under dark
below a slippery stitch
an abandoned cart
on an iced-over road
the homemade sweater of
holidays unraveling
we neglected to catch it
loss is never learned
always new but dimmer now
in the frigid hours
where skin and bones lift off
the raw meat of memory
awake as worms
tucked in snow
it stings to touch it
time’s open basket
our merriment and
tinsel and a solstice moon
I step into
blank as a wound
as a bridge of silence
whatever drove him
it’s day for night now
there is no other way
she said
at the gate of winter
I have seen birth
and death I said
I thought
they were different
Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2023 CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize and 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize. She is the author of five poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and recently named one of Kirkus Reviews 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist is forthcoming in 2024. Bitting holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Mythological Studies, emphasis Poetry and Psychology. She is writing a novel that centers around Los Angeles and her great grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.
Return to May 2024 Edition