Poem by Maureen Alsop

Necromancy
    divination by means of communication with the dead


Where all the deciduous trees break open and are washed out, at that place in Monroe, Iowa. When the waitress takes your order in that far away diner, you will blink.  You consider the looseness of your thirst. You will be cut into the song of katydid. Occasionally a high beam touches your forehead.  The silver jangle of beads grace your ears. 

Lay down tonight under the tender weave of bells, flowering hazel, strange music. Thistles in your wool sweater. Later this fall you will know you were not alive. Essence of mushroom and scotch.  Swarm of the three grouse.  What finds you again is you. You who find love in secret will not know the tremble of the body. Your hair will be filled with kisses, larkspur, birdseed. A crown of bees fill the mirror.


first published at the Kenyon Review

Maureen Alsop, Ph.D. is the author of Later, Knives & Trees; Mirror Inside Coffin; Mantic; Apparition Wren; and several chapbooks. She is the winner of the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award through the Hawaii Council for the Humanities, Harpur Palate's Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry and The Bitter Oleander’s Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prize on six occasions. Her poems have appeared in various journals including The Laurel Review, AGNI, Blackbird, Tampa Review, Action Yes, Drunken Boat, and The Kenyon Review. Her translations of the poetry of Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay, 1892-1979) and Mario Domínguez Parra are available through Poetry Salzburg Review. She teaches online with the Poetry Barn.

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