Grace by Sandra Marchetti


 
 
Lie flat on your back
in the black lake

this night of your
annunciation.

The water’s still
until sprung,

lapping at your
body afloat.

You model suspension.
Over the bridge,

the flat black
moths rise,

circle the violet sky,
the sand, you at the center.

You lie still as
stared-at heaven.

Blank and enormous,
the moths flick off your face

and round the lake
in a night circus

until the dark wings alight,

twist your body
in cold twilight.

On the shoreline, a fawn stops midflight
and hops—shook toward night.

 
 
 
Sandra Marchetti’s debut full-length collection of poems, Confluence, is forthcoming in Gold Wake Press’s 2014 Print Series. She is also the author two chapbooks: The Canopy is available from MWC Press and A Detail in the Landscape, a collection of poetry and essays, is forthcoming from Eating Dog Press. Sandy’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Ohio State’s The Journal, Subtropics, Phoebe, Nashville Review, The Hollins Critic, and Thrush, among others. You can find her at sandrapoetry.net.