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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Author: Mary Waterfield

Dissecting Poetry

I am confused by critics
who dissect poetry.
It is,
simply what it is,
air among feathers,
flurries in the night,
the blanket of a kiss.

Poets are peeled like oranges,
their juice dripping on the floor
like blood,
wounded,
wanting only to have been eaten,
not taken apart like machinery.

As if the working of the parts
are the shadows
that fill a machine,
and make it move.
I am an anti-soul,
Anti-logic,
Anti-intellectual,
Anti-phobic.

Fill me with heat,
sun,
green grass,
green eyes,
green sea.
Cups of dissolving stars,
love, undisciplined,
given freely,
accepted with immensity.

I want all the depths
the universe creates,
all the heights
thrown into emptiness,
all the blue ready to rain down,
all the hands I can possibly touch,

And given the few words I have
woven into poetry,
a bouquet for bare places,
nothing recondite,
difficult,
preachy.
Just the portion of the world
left behind inside me,
and the rest racing ahead
playing hide and seek.