Marjorie Maddox

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry, the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite), and 4 children’s/YA books. In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, based on her daughter’s paintings, is forthcoming in 2023 (Shanti Arts). Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Anna Lee Hafer is a studio artist based in the Philadelphia area who graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY in 2019. Previous experience in the art field includes studio exhibitions and publications. See www.hafer.work

When We Are Lost, How We Are Found

When We Are Lost

A speck on a slide
beneath the eye
of a sanitized microscope
inside the high-rise of science
that, from its penthouse view,
takes a perfectly executed nose dive
into a glass of river water that is you—
swished together with dead phytoplankton—
then slurps you up, spits you out, catalogs
who and what you are according to your own
Morse Code zip code or six left turns
on a long and winding trail in a forgotten
rainforest (whichever comes first) that leads,
eventually, to your DNA buried beneath
the third rock on the right on the night
that Cassiopeia boasts her brightest charms—
all to publish, mind you, in strict APA format,
your cascading hair and crooked toes
alongside the hard-to-define hue of your torso
lying down in green pastures or
floating in still waters
between the pressed pages of this year’s
meticulously peer-reviewed prestigious journal,
now on sale for $39.99 at most Ivy League institutions
with an active membership subscription,
up until the summer solstice
but not after.

How We Are Found

Not slip-sliding away,
that same drop of me/you/us
in breeze or creek, cumulous or reef,
whiplashing what’s left of then
into now.
And not that
mindfulness moment
invented by blade and slug
on a day not unlike tomorrow’s
in-the-middle-of-
nothing
but the same,
me/you/us on display.
But, rather,
something
indescribably and irretrievably
in between.

Anna Lee Hafer, Bare Minimum, 2018. Used by permission of the artist. Artist’s Statement: A more minimalistic work, this painting explores the beauty of the female body without material or societal influences, bare. It also raises questions and begins an intimate conversation with the viewer on what we truly need to be happy.

Bare Minimum

––after the painting by Anna Lee Hafer

Beneath whitewash:
sternum, neck, skull,

the fog of face,
the residue of dream

released to scream
or freedom. No comment.

Unclothed of skin
and woven expectations,

bone stacks on
bone, exposes the core

of caustic commentary.
What we see is

beneath the said no comment
is not the bared but

the unbearable here I am
of society’s design

on us I am
breathing bare here.