Marion Boyer
Marion Starling Boyer is a professor emerita of Communication and has published three full-length poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her book, Ice Hours (2023), won the University of Michigan’s Wheelbarrow prize and was named “New and Noteworthy” by Poets & Writers. Her chapbook, What Word for This, won Grayson Books 2023 competition. Boyer lives in Twinsburg, Ohio, home of the annual world gathering of twins. She conducts workshops for Lit Cleveland. For more see www.marionstarlingboyer.com.
Rorschach
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am. – Stanley Kunitz
My mother, in her eighties, saw sheep in the spaces
between ivy vines in her kitchen wallpaper.
Little cloud shapes with legs. Each time I’d visit
she’d point them out. Look, there’s another.
And I’d agree, delighting her.
Now, I see the heads of ruined lions
in our tiled bathroom floor. Broken muzzles,
gaunt cheeks, ears like dried mushrooms form
from the confusion of grey swirls. These are not
the Kenyan lions we once watched roar at dawn;
not the sated male swaggering from the kill,
his belly swaying, face dripping gore.
Right beside our jeep a pair were in the brush,
mating. I wonder, love, do you remember that?
On the floor, where two tiles meet, one lion’s
long nose cradles the jowls of another.
The two gaze vacantly at the wall. I’d point them out
but these are not sheep and this room is private.
