CLOSE TO THE ABYSS

by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

 

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss—

a felon in the White House—yet you, my knight,

ride in. I wouldn’t think to call it bliss

 

with tensions at a high-pitched, python hiss

in news reports: so many crimes. Indict!

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

 

and you distract me as we reminisce

about our kids, the work we love, hold tight

to us, and still, I couldn’t call it bliss

 

when daughters, sons, so young, are stuck with this:

his lies, the vitriol he spews, the spite.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss.

 

You vow we’ll move to Portugal, dismiss

the obstacles of language, passports, flight,

the cost. Is now the time to call it bliss?

 

A lunatic— his head ballooned with hubris—

rouses me to stand, to choose to fight.

We’ve never lived so close to the abyss,

but I have you. I will. I’ll call it bliss.

 

Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts and works in her hometown library as Head of the Reference department. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, Orbis, Crannóg, Eclectica Magazine and American Arts Quarterly, among others. She won the 2017 Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland, and was accepted into Marge Piercy’s Summer Poetry Intensive in Wellfleet. She is a member of the Powow River poets, and her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.

AT THE BRIDGE

by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

Phoebe Jonchuck died Thursday when she was tossed from the Dick Misener Bridge in St. Petersburg. At her memorial service Wednesday in Tampa, those who knew her spoke of a girl with an infectious smile who learned to love going to school and told friends she wanted to be a dancer when she grew up. There was scant mention of John Jonchuck, 25, her father, who remains jailed, accused of dropping the little girl to her death. --Dan Sullivan, Tampa Bay Times, January 14, 2015                                                                                                                            

Long hair and the voice of a hummingbird
Long hair and the voice of a hummingbird
I want a ticket to anywhere
I want a ticket to anywhere
Hummingbirds want a stronger voice, and I
long for anywhere, my ticket in my hair

Oh daddy dear you know you’re still number one
Oh daddy dear you know you’re still number one
This is just a fairytale happening in a supermarket
This is just a fairytale happening in a supermarket
Dear daddy: you’re a number in a supermarket
just as this is happening. Oh, one fairytale stills.

Because he’s all I ever knew of love
Because he’s all I ever knew of love
He only loves those things because he loves to see them break
He only loves those things because he loves to see them break
I break because he’s all he ever knew of love, because
those things he sees love, love only him too.

Oh daddy, I love you because you were
my ticket to anywhere, because all you ever knew of love
was long hair, stillness, and numbers in a supermarket. You said:
These things just happen, dear
I want the voice of a hummingbird, a fairytale one,
who only loves to see me unbroken.


Author's note: Lyrics borrowed from the following artists and songs, in order: “Can You Hear Me?” by Missy Elliott featuring TLC; “Fast Car,” by Tracey Chapman; “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper; “Fairytale in a Supermarket” by The Raincoats; “Criminal” by Fiona Apple; “Doll Parts” by Hole.

Marybeth Rua-Larsen is a lover of form in poetry. Just about any form. Her chapbook Nothing In-Between was released from Barefoot Muse Press last year.