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Tag: @katiemarya13

Love Poem for My Ex-Husband

Every day we spend together ends

in the past: our bucket full of hair,

my favorite spoons, 100 t-shirts, the bed.

You said of course the days are faster

now than in the past, the bucket fills

with half of them. I count time left though

we’re not sick. You said the days are faster,

we have less of them. This math haunts me.

I count the decades left, we’re lucky.

Your name is a song, a river—there

are less of them now—I saw you first

with a surfboard on the lawn. Your name

is also a cantaloupe, pronounced pay-kiss

and I crawled into you on the lawn with

that surfboard before biting my lips

gently into the cantaloupe, crawling

into a river slow orange sun quiet warm

before biting my lips into your name I float

on for some time, a river slow orange sun

quiet warm toward Atlanta where I float

on your name for some time, seek the control

none of us have in our hometowns. Remember

my panic attacks after William, my childhood

friend, was shot in the parking lot. Panic. Loud.

You always make the bed because I can’t

unsee that gun blasting in the parking lot—

I need the control none of us have because

I can’t unsee the panic. My mother says I’m

like a bullet needing the control no one has,

but you say forget the metaphor, no one’s only

what their mother says. You’re my tribe,

a river, a goddamn cantaloupe, everything

your mother said and I’ll float my lips on you

forever until every day we spend together ends.

from Sugar WorkFind more by Katie Marya at the library

Copyright © 2022 Katie Marya
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

An Open Call to Single Daughters of Single Mothers

Come and bring your mother’s bodies: bring her naked body and her clothed body, the
body she had in the kitchen and on the couch, her walking-out-the-door body and her
wake-up body, bring her tight jeans body, her cleaning body, bring the drive-you-to-
school body, and the day job body in beige work pants, bring her bathing suit body,
her parallel parking body, her laughing body, her popcorn shovel-mouth body—

don’t forget her brand-new-nails body and her discipline body—the do-your-
homework body, her packing body, her jealous and honest body, her vacation body,
her long-dress body when you graduated from high school and college, bring her very
own daughter body, the bare breast body in her mirror body, bring her body in the
glass shower, her sleeping body, her sick body—leave Atlanta first home fast with
your mother’s body danger the man danger the stuck, you’ll want to peel off her
bronzed skin, to hold her, for the rest of your life.

And bring the materials that go with her bodies: the white linen pants, rayon multi-
color shirts, green spandex dress, leather jacket, bring all her purses with their hangy
purse things; bring each piece of jewelry: the giant costume rings—the one shaped
like a dragonfly, and the glitter bangle bracelets; bring the bedazzled baseball hats and
the pile of strappy sandals, her body sprays, her cigarettes, the pictures of you she
keeps in her wallet, her Day-Timer, People magazines, and her cable TV box,

the swimming pool she bought and the plastic storage bin full of your grade school
stories; grab all her drinks: the Big Gulp Diet Coke, the McDonald’s coffee. Her
bodies will need a snack—a cheeseburger, a whole chocolate pie. Don’t forget her
vitamins and orange juice, the grilled fish and asparagus. Don’t leave any of her bodies
behind, pile everything into your Toyota Corolla, give her travel body a travel pillow
and get here as fast as you can.

from Sugar WorkFind more by Katie Marya at the library

Copyright © 2022 Katie Marya
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Loud Thundering Bids Her

My mother sleeps in sheets

then wakes up sweaty needing me,

the foreboding gray haze thick

until I switch on the big light

so she can see my face. This kind

of winter becomes monthly, daily

and I do not know how to be

the thing my mother needs.

It is said all mothers inherit

the sorrow of Demeter:

3,000 years of seasonal death

relived and packed into mitosis,

what exhaustion. I have no concept

of eternal suffering except for what

my mother feels in her bones,

I can’t imagine the bed without her

in it nor the desert where she built

our house alone. Oh Eternal Mother

let me let her rest let me not

call her back with thunder.

from Sugar WorkFind more by Katie Marya at the library

Copyright © 2022 Katie Marya
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Daughter of an Atlanta Stripper

My mom on that stage rehearsing

to Madonna’s Material Girl—

she wears champagne pink tights,

her legs ethereal and the light hits

her chest so gold dust surrounds

her face. A mirror unfolds behind her,

making it hard to choose which side

of her to admire. Three women follow

her 8-counts while I eat chicken nuggets.

They move in unison. One trips, laughs—

they start again, hips gliding back and forth,

knees bruised from the moves on all fours.

In the back I snoop through drawers

of sequined lingerie, tubes of glitter

lipstick. Mom catches me, lets me pick

a scrunchy, lets me try the lightest shade.

from Sugar WorkFind more by Katie Marya at the library

Copyright © 2022 Katie Marya
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

The Religion I’ve Made of My Mother

I believe in ghosts and angels and god or a burst

that made me from love. I believe in a city

where no one is hungry with houses made of native grass

and biodegradable long-term material and the color yellow.

I am inside one of these houses, the one my mother makes

as she disappears, she disappears in the making of it,

she’s surrendered, she holds desire by its neck.

She eats the cake, the salmon, the ramen, the drunk’s

final piece of bread, the glitter dress. Her mouth engulfs

a McDonald’s hamburger in the middle of night. She’s lean,

round-brush bangs, bleached blonde. Some years I don’t see

my mother then she appears, fearless, not afraid of god or distance

or the ground, not afraid of her own going, like I am.

Acrylic nails with that subtle pink so her hands look more soft

than strong. I believe in her hands. I can’t imagine a world without her

in it, eating and smoking. The Marlboro burns near a corner of her lips.

I can’t believe in a god who relies on wounds to be seen.

from Sugar WorkFind more by Katie Marya at the library

Copyright © 2022 Katie Marya
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.