Poem of the Week: Stacy Gnall

Maternalique

Sure as a first balled fist,
____________________it wells
you awake
_______as from a quake–

_____the want
_______________to give a swaddled
__________star to the night’s arc.

You step out
_____and the landscape lengthens.

Each parcel of dark
_______________a mouth to be fed,

each umbra hunkered
__________to its suckling.

The fog rocks the gray,
_____loving it with its life.

You walk, emboldened as a nova.

You unfurl.
____________Half-ready to catch the moon’s fall.

______________________Your hand halfway

to the soft part of that skull.

______________________________________________
Stacy Gnall is the author of Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books, 2011). She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her work has previously appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio she now lives in Los Angeles.