Betsy Mars
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in ONE ART, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”
The Bends
On that last dive the light came through the kelp forest
like beams through the highest church windows
it might have been
La Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame, the Duomo,
but here I was off Catalina
finding god in the sea, the Garibaldi flashing
like enormous darting pennies, sands lifted
by soft winds of gentle waves, a glittering
mist in the sky of ocean. If I swam too far down,
rose too fast, the bubbles in my lungs
would outpace me, inflated gas
could erase me, exploded like an overblown
pufferfish. Such is the power
of the depths, bodies bursting under pressure.
