methuselah

Dear Readers, I am posting a poem a day for National Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets offers a poem-a-day e-mail for April. Check out their website here.

From time to time I will be posting poems that I think are interesting and ones from friends that I admire.

Today's poem is a lovely section from a series by my friend Rio.

from Methuselah Series
for Nate

1. Opiate Study

Your whole mass, a white heaping sack on the grass
cell-stitches keeping you from exploding poison
into the downstream of Chalk Creek.

Your whiteness is contagious, July and everything around
you begins to freeze. The reeds of Crab Grass harden like pins
beneath you, Blue Spruce Pines frost over in powder snow
there is no sun and no single breed of cloud in the sky.

This is the moment you die. A clearing in the woods:
your maker's un-womb. No chord to keep you close to your mother.


-Rio Cortez


Rio Cortez is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she was the recipient of the Lucy Grealy Prize in Poetry. Her work has been published in Dark Phrases & Through the Looking Glass. She is currently working on her chapbook, Ugly. Rio hates plane crashes and the MTA Doomsday Budget Plan; she loves and lives in Queens, NY.