Poem by Sarah Maclay

Bride, Running           
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But it’s her way, always, to find burrs caught in her hair, dead pine needles, even today, even, in this endlessness of tulle and lawn-soiled shoes, satin, snail-trail of mascara—and nothing is wrong. Nothing. Nothing except that the planets are off, colliding, turning day into eclipse, and no matter how she runs, she can never seem to make it, like a borrowed horse, to the end of the lawn—veil streaming behind her in some labyrinth of wind, tiny enough, kicked up by the planets, until the veil and the tulle are as long as the lawn, as long as a lung—one mouthful, diaphanous breath that stops only as her fingers touch the electric sheath of sky.  

Sarah Maclay’s most recent collection is The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence, a braided collaboration with Holaday Mason (What Books Press, 2016).  A 2016 City of LA Literary Fellow, 2015 Yaddo resident, and Pushcart Special Mention awardee, her earlier books include Music for the Black Room (2011), The White Bride (2008) and Whore (2004, Tampa Review Prize for Poetry), all from UT Press. Her poems and criticism appear in APR, The Writer’s Chronicle, FIELD, The Best American Erotic Poetry: From 1800 to the Present, Ploughshares, Poetry International, where she long served as Book Review Editor, and many other spots. She teaches poetry and creative writing at LMU.

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