New Poetry by M.B. McLatchey

The Shadow Maker
Our goal is to make it so there’s as little friction as possible to having a social experience. – Mark Zuckerberg

is the fifth richest man in the world;
a harvester of pearls: our small talk
like algae-rich waters and tides – new births,
divorces, prizes our children acquire–
feeding and keeping the oysters alive.

is a master of illusion: figures in captioned
poses, screen and light; shadows that dance
on cave walls. Dramas that make us muse, lean
in, post notes like medieval glosses in the margins
of someone else’s domestic scenes; illuminators
to an epic chant, a rhapsody’s god-dream.

is the Ideal Prince, accepting the burden
of princedoms, glory, survival, to jettison distinctions:
good and depraved; monarch and something human
saved. Better to be loved and feared rather than
admired, or worse, revered. A lord who understands
the desire to acquire. A magician with two hands.

is a Philosopher King, able to discourse on goodness,
justice, corrupting pride; hold court on high ideas:
opinion, false truths, reality–a theory of forms
that casts our lives in cycles, fruit and fallow; sinners
redeemed. A god’s will altered; a cave master’s dream.

 

War in Eurasia
We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves. – Orwell, 1984

We sleep like guard dogs, one eye open, groomed to unlock
from one another’s folds. Older, a cooler grey than our adult
years. Your breast, like a forbidden prayer or scent or thought,
presses against my arm. The war in Eurasia rages on. The dull

flicker of the TV; the news anchor’s lips tattooed a deep
party red mouthing vowels: A and E, and O – not I or U.
Everything in black and white, or streams of sepia.
We hardly remember the difference between the news

and truer truths; the sum of two plus two. Harvest seasons
pass. Dictionaries yield a sulphury marsh gas. Winters sprout
days of halcyon, golden wheat. We yearn for myths that lean on
goddesses of crops, a mother’s loss and rage, a revenge drought.

Love is the warrior’s call. We knew it in the womb, first breath,
when we were made to choose: a dying art, or this waking death.


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M.B. McLatchey is a poet and writer living, writing, and teaching in Florida. Author of five books, including the award-winning titles Beginner’s Mind (Regal House Publishing, 2021) and The Lame God (2013 May Swenson Award, Utah State University Press), she is recipient of the American Poet Prize from American Poetry Journal, the Annie Finch Prize from National Poetry Review, and was recently nominated for the 2020 Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. McLatchey is Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Poet Laureate of Florida’s Volusia County, Arts Ambassador for Atlantic Center for the Arts, and U.S. Ambassador to the HundrED global foundation for education. She received her graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University, MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and her B.A. from Williams College. Visit her at www.mbmclatchey.com.

Read More: A brief Q&A with M.B. McLatchey