Betsy Mars
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a compulsive photographer, and an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Betsy earned her BA from USC in Psychology and an MA in Communications Management from the Annenberg School at USC. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize as well as for the Best of the Net. Betsy’s work has appeared widely online and in print in numerous journals and anthologies. Betsy has written two chapbooks—Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-authored with Alan Walowitz—and a full-length book titled Rue Obscure forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026.
Homograph: A Golden Shovel
this infinite moment swelling full as you notice this is it
— Kim Stafford, from What It All Comes Down To
Every heartbeat sounds like sand shifting and I ask myself is this
the last kiss on desert skin cooling into the icy infinite?
We have fluids to give and too late medications, each moment
precious as your face, now so shrunken, minutes swelling
holy with the love of a thousand pregnancies, full
of regret, full of missed chances, full of moment as,
(the weight of the stressed syllable so obvious to you,
an epiphany to me) I anoint you, reminded that I must notice
more next time, declare (to no one but myself) that this
is the last time I will discount what is.
Your body entranced, you open to uncertainty and desert it.
Androcles
Each time that I drag myself from my bed, heart
full of dread for what the day might bring, I tick
a box off the finite number of mornings
on offer, ask myself whether it matters, and why.
I tell myself I am impotent, unimportant, a bit
character in this play that my mother reminded
me was not a dress rehearsal. Another cliché
but one of the only bits of maternal wisdom
that sticks. We make our meaning, I suppose.
Though at this moment all that comes to me
are trite visions of ripples and butterfly wings,
fanning air that someone elsewhere breathes to sing.
I hold each destination fleetingly, with yearning
and despair, a constant goodbye on my lips,
one foot out the door the instant I arrive.
From where I stand what does it mean
to have pulled a thorn from a lion’s paw
or spread my words like seeds, not knowing
where or how they land? If grief is love
and love begets grief, will I be pardoned in the end?
