Betsy Mars
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. She is the author of two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.
Foxes in the Meadow
And I know it’s spring by the 7th graders
trading barbs drawing penises
on the white boardstealing
each other’s pens or other treasures
testing the limits of their reach
they encroach on each other’s spaces
laugh outrageously at anything
embarrassing their lengthening
limbs and hormones always testing
the limits of the teacher’s patience
balancing their childhood on their bravado
tilting against expectations just enough
not too much their chairs lean back
only two legs holding them
to the ground sometimes they tip
brush it off feign tough
they pounce at shadows play
in this meadow dancing in
the in-between.
Gathering Mangos
The ground is littered with fruit, and I stoop
over and over and over, knees creaking,
awed by the abundance, the windblown and underripe,
others dropping heavy with juice, skin splitting.
Some infested with insects and larvae, some pocked
with holes where they’ve been pecked by birds.
Some already gnawed to the pit
by whatever nocturnal creature feasted.
Most wear a wound, soft spots where the force
of gravity and ground took its toll. I sort
them into piles: too small, too damaged,
those rare few unmarked, most salvageable
with patience and a tender knife;
a skillful hand works around the bruise.
Under the Microscope
In a dark night, satellites are satellites are satellites.
Venus makes a pass at Hubble, winks at Mars.
The quiet is buried under neon lights and phone glow.
The cat dog-ears the book I am trying to read
and a bird falls out, humming a song without a tune.
The spotted dog, dissatisfied with his work,
lays down his brush, gathers flowers
to fill the painted vase.
Flame lily pollen under the microscope:
rainbow candy-coated seeds passed
from hand to sticky hand, nose to nose.
Migrating eye of flounder watches
the underside of the ocean,
envies the anglerfish.
Atop the bell tower, I sit, hunchbacked,
toss crumpled pitchforks at the mob below.
