Betsy Mars
Betsy Mars is a poet and educator who currently resides in the LA area. She has a BA and MA from USC which she puts to no obvious use. Her family leans toward academia and psychology, so she developed an early tendency to overthink and overfeel. Her work can be found in a number of anthologies, and even more online journals. She is very proud to have had her first chapbook,Alinea, published this past January by Picture Show Press.
Taking the Waters
Glowing with bioluminescent life, you stretch out,
half-flowing back to the sea from whence you came.
The message in a bottle arrived too late
to alter the fate that draws your face blue,
cheeks sunken with the effort to revive
the hope that once lay within, going
in and out with the tide –
eyes welling with the swell
of memory filled almost to capacity.
The starfish are out of their element,
crabbed, and you – you unroll
like paper from your corked container,
a dissolving sand sculpture, erased by the sea.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 