Marc Frazier

Marc Frazier has published poetry in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore. He has had memoir from his book WITHOUT published in Gravel, The Good Men Project, decomP, Autre, Cobalt, Evening Street Review, and Punctuate. Marc, an LGBTQ+ writer, is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry, has been featured on Verse Daily, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a “best of the net.” His book The Way Here and his two chapbooks are available on Amazon as well as his second full-length collection titled Each Thing Touches (Glass Lyre Press). Willingly, his third poetry book, will be published by Adelaide Books in 2019. His website is www.marcfrazier.org

Links

Before the cicadas’ August complaints
the long light of the solstice

After ink dries on porous paper
the branching veins of your sketches

Before it furnishes it with grief
good intentions make us a home

After Vermont turns us green
we lose the forest path

Before shopping Buck’s County in dusk
coffee under a blue umbrella

After words begin to matter
the silence of: how close can we get?

Before the squawk of an insistent jay
the stillness of tall pines

After the coffin is lowered
eyes of the living stare

After what I’ve come to terms with returns
I sit before the altar I’ve built

Before days grow longer
early dusk the veil on a mourner’s hat

Progression

cento from my book Each Thing Touches

the seawall groans
a sound like willows in distress

memory stuck in the ruin of my move
seaward
silt at the edge of shore

if we were listened to it was chance
the map of childhood safe in our heads:

among swirls of snow, winter light
we studied only what was before us
limbs not knowing the body’s nature

when man saw sky, he knew he was mortal
there are no gods without death
the shape of what once lived

I do not have one life

ants open peonies as if souls will emerge
Coleus throbs:
my words lean like leaves toward light

a new race would do everything the same
any ending does fine